Garlanded with glorious reviews and European literary awards, Danish publishing sensation, Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof, is a strikingly unique proposition. The first in a planned septology, this ambitious and courageous novel is essentially a denunciation of late capitalism, told through the prism of a real-life tragedy (The 1990 arson attack on the Scandinavian Star ferry, which killed 159 people but was never satisfactorily explained). In this inspired tale, Nordenhof imagines the lives and loves of a middle-aged Danish couple, interlaced with a journalistic dissection of the disaster. How the two may be connected makes for galvanising reading.
In the beginning we hear Nordenhof’s own voice, a voice that returns later in the narrative with the volume turned up. Here she envisions and seeks her couple, Kurt and Maggie, living on the outskirts of the city of Nyborg.
Kurt owns and runs a bus company, Maggie takes care of the home and mourns the fact that their daughter, Sofie, has grown up and moved away. The nest is empty and the couple have only each other and a relationship that has been souring for years. Apathy envelopes them.
‘Maggie turns over the spoon to make sure she’s rinsed off all the porridge, but forgets the point of what she’s doing. She gets lost in the shiny thing, hoping that eventually the spoon itself will jog her out of her reverie.’
Meanwhile, Kurt alternates between dull distractedness at work and too many nights ruminating at the bar, his hand reaching for his beer ‘like a sluggish swarm of bees.’ When indefinable feelings of failure arise, Kurt reminds himself that whatever life has thrown at him, he has persisted. Business is good and he’s looking for a sound new investment.
Cleverly weaving the couple’s history into the story of post-war capitalism, Nordenhof explores the ways that money and acquisition shapes our lives. In their younger years, both Kurt and Maggie hovered on the margins of society, poverty and powerlessness driving them to desperate measures. Beneath their current apathy lies anger and unhealed trauma.
Into this narrative, the novelist turns journalist and inserts a well-researched factual account of the Scandinavian Star tragedy. Beginning in the mid 1980’s, she traces the corporations involved in its time as a passenger ferry and a litany of all too predictable issues: low wages, poor working conditions, a ‘creative approach to safety’. Financial machinations and obfuscations meant that the ship could be insured for up to twenty four million dollars.
‘It makes me dizzy, reading about commerce…with overlapping clusters of owners, all buying and selling from each other. Money that both does and does not change hands.’
On the 7th April 1990, multiple fires began on the Scandinavian Star and 159 people died, shortly before the insurance policy was due to expire. A botched police investigation and decades of tenacious journalism have delivered some chilling revelations.
In this extraordinary work, Nordenhof, a poet whose words sing in many of Kurt and Maggie’s scenes, takes a cold, hard look at how the practice of profit over people has impacted ordinary lives. The upcoming novels in this septology will make for fascinating reading.
Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof is published by Jonathan Cape, 160 pages.
