The Devil Book Review: A Scandinavian Series Burning with Intent
In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete truth regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.
Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse
In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's discontent may originate in a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.
The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style
This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”
A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.
Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to literature as a form of activism
Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration
Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.
Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events
Numerous UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose final form, at present, is unknowable.
Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused
Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.
