Italian Shoes

A beautiful book. I found myself dreaming of ice bound islands and meeting people related to me I will probably never meet...a lovely and grounding journey.

This is a nice little work from one of the masters of mystery. Unlike the Wallander series, this book is a character study akin to Camus' The Stranger (but with snow, ice, and Swedish charm). The main character is hard to sympathize with, especially at first. He is alienated from himself, his family, and even his pets. By the end of the book the reader will still not have developed sympathy for him but the reader will develop empathy for him. One can empathize with the desire to close ourselves off from our lives and mistakes, but in the end we all have to face our fears and the intimacy of human society. Mankell provides us with a lesson or two in this work.

This elegant novel is the best Mankell I have read. The story is interesting, but the quality of composition and the beautiful prose make this a must read. This is my sixth Mankell book and certainly not my last. If you are looking for a mystery, this is not your book. If you are looking for a touching story of and old man and his life past and present; it is amongst the best.

This is a perfect book. It's about life. It's about mistakes, learning from mistakes, and all this perspective comes from an author who doesn't live and work in the United States. This book is about another culture. This is a book to be read by anyone over 55 years old. Sure, a younger person can read this book -- however; someone who has experienced life will relate to the emotions and personalities.

In his 26th novel, Sweden's top crime writer has eschewed the genre that has seen him sell 30 million books. Even so, fans of his Inspector Wallander novels will find much of what they love about the Skåne detective in the narrator of "Italian Shoes"--only given even more depth by the constant focus on a man struggling with guilt and emotional silence. Fredrik is a surgeon who abandoned his career a decade ago because of a mistake he made during an operation. He refused to acknowledge his error and went to live alone on a remote island. One morning he sees a woman standing on the frozen sea. He discovers that she's the girlfriend he abandoned as a young man. Harriet's arrival forces Fredrik to meet a series of people from his past. He thought he could cut himself off on his island. As he realizes he can't, he finds the allure of companionship attractive, but struggles to manage these new relationships. This is a devastatingly honest and keenly personal novel. It ranks with Norwegian Per Petterson's "Out Stealing Horses" for its marvelous portrayal of withdrawal from society--and its consequences. Mankell writes with a measured pace that's in tune with the frozen weather and the slow body of the aging Fredrik. Though "Italian Shoes" is a departure for Mankell, he examines a topic common to crime novels--death. But he reverses the crime novel's way of looking at death. He's not concerned here with how death occurs. Rather he wants to understand why anyone should care whether they live or die. Crime writers create a violent death, to show how the remaining characters experience life in extreme circumstances. Here Mankell depicts a man who essentially stopped living and who rediscovers life when faced with the impending death of Harriet. "Before I die," Fredrik says, "I must know why I've lived." In his dour, bitter way, Mankell has the answer. More reviews and blog posts at www.mattbeynonrees.com