My Men - Victoria Kielland

 

I found this a curious and strangely compelling book. I thought it was a straightforward novel about a female serial killer. It wasn’t until I reached the end that I realised it was a fictional imagining of real life serial killer, Belle Gunness. I hadn’t heard of her before, so I’ve googled quite a bit. That’s the kind of effect the book had on me!

This isn’t a direct third person retelling of events narrative. Rather, it’s an incredibly deep and profound philosophical imagining of what might have been going on in this notorious woman’s head, from an early age to her murder spree. 

I’ve often wondered what goes on in the head of somebody capable of committing such acts of atrocity. I can’t imagine how the desire to kill somebody even enters your head. It doesn’t enter mine so I guess that’s why I can’t grasp the motivation and the intent to provoke such heinous crimes. I think this may have been the intent of the book. To look at how a young girl in a search for love, for beauty, spirals downwards into a vortex of almost madness. The book is like one long soliloquy of somebody’s search for the unattainable. There is an emphasis on her devout, Christian zeal, and the conversations she has in her head with God. That sounds like an incredible paradox doesn’t it?  Thou shalt not kill drifts across my mind, but somehow Belle rationalises her actions in her own head. And maybe that’s another  intention of the book to show that people capable of murder are able to justify their actions in their own head. It’s scary.

I found it an unsettling book, even before I knew who Belle Gunness was! It’s very poetically written, which, for much of the narrative provoked a sense of empathy towards the protagonist. But there’s always the sense that she’s not quite right. I think the clever prologue subliminally sows the seeds for that sense of disquiet.

Belle is a paradox - in possession of such lofty and deep perceptions regarding love, and yet capable of such brutality.  Emigrating from her native Norway to the United States to escape the anguish of pregnancy, unrequited love and unprovoked violence you sense that Belle begins a new life with the best of intentions. Well we know about best intentions don’t we?

It’s an unconventional read, original, not over long, that is quite fascinating. Very skilfully translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls. My thanks to Steven Cooper at Pushkin Press for a gifted proof.