Danish author, Maria Gerhardt, died of breast cancer on 16 March 2017. She was thirty-nine years old and left behind a wife and son. Soon after, Transfer Window, a haunting account of her final months, was published. Now, Nordisk Books, an exciting new publishing house focusing on contemporary Scandinavian literature, have brought out Gerhardt’s final work in English translation.
Interweaving passages of vivid fantasy and auto-fiction, Gerhardt offers a fragmented meditation on the final months of a young woman’s life. She imagines a luxurious hospice, Rosenhaven, by the sea, where Maria rests and waits for death. The residents take regular dips in the ocean and relax in the sauna. Music, however, is prohibited; ‘it wakes too many feelings’. Maria resents the older residents dying of cancer. She is
‘furious at the post-war generation crowded around me, twitching in their wigs. What have you got to bawl about? You guys have seen the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the turn of the 21st century and counting. I despise you and your grief, your awkward sons staring at me.’
Maria has her own young son. He finds it hard to adapt to her ill health, while she struggles to accept his perspective. She recalls their last times together before she moved to the hospice. How he would climb into her lap for comfort when she was still strong. Later, she overhears him tell a girl from playgroup, ‘My mum’s got the worst sickness in the world. You can die from it. She walks around in her underpants all day.’
Maria explores her anger and fear at having to leave the world before her time. How do you say goodbye to loved ones? How do you cope with the bitterness of having lived half a life? Time moves faster and people behave differently when you are dying. Sometimes, a single observation, sitting alone at the top of a page, speaks volumes: ‘I remember the list, updated weekly, of friends who couldn’t bear to be around me.’ Or: ‘The sick are sent stacks of emojis.’
We are never sure whether Mikkel, Maria’s best friend in the hospice, is real or imagined, but he offers solace ‘behind the wall’. They visit the Virtual Reality Store together. They tell the shop assistant which memories they want to relive and act like recalcitrant teenagers. Mikkel drinks illegally while Maria defies her doctors’ advice: ‘I wait for the sun, smoking cigarettes while I wait, smoking cigarettes even though it is not allowed.’
Maria is decaying from within: ‘a ghastly place to be. Half dead and half alive … Do we look into or out of a transfer window?’ she muses. “The bane of always having to be so existential when you’d rather be talking about so-and-so’s screwed-up love life.’
The mind is the last to succumb to the ravages of chemotherapy. Gerhardt’s remarkable feat is to convey the rich interior monologue of a women on the brink of death, while fighting ‘a body forever in a state of emergency.’
Reviewed by Lucy Popescu
TRANSFER WINDOW
Written by Maria Gerhardt
Translated from Danish by Lindy Falk van Rooyen
Published by Nordisk Books (2019)
Lucy Popescu reviews books for various publications including the Financial Times, TLS and New Humanist. Her anthology, A Country to Call Home, focusing on the experiences of young refugees was published in June 2018. Her other publications include A Country of Refuge, The Good Tourist and Another Sky. She is chair of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. www.LucyPopescu.com / Twitter: @Lucyjpop
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of THE ARCHIPELAGO OF ANOTHER LIFE by Andreï Makine
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of INFIDELS by Abdellah Taïa
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of LALA by Jacek Dehnel
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of THINGS THAT FALL FROM THE SKY by Selja Ahava
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of CHILDREN OF THE CAVE by Virve Sammalkorpi
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of PROLETERKA by Fleur Jaeggy
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of THE DEATH OF MURAT IDRISSI by Tommy Wieringa
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of ONE HUNDRED DAYS by Lukas Bärfuss
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of THE TREE OF THE TORAJA by Philippe Claudel
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of AND THE WIND SEES ALL by Guđmundur Andri Thorsson
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of TROPIC OF VIOLENCE by Nathacha Appanah
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of WHAT WE OWE by Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of ONE CLEAR ICE COLD JANUARY MORNING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY by Roland Schimmelpfennig
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of SHADOWS ON THE TUNDRA by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of ESTORIL by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of LIFE BEGINS ON FRIDAY by Ioana Pârvulescu
Read Lucy Popescu’s #RivetingReview of HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER by Marie Sizun