Tag: contemporary fiction

Book Review – When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated by Alice Menzies

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About the Book

Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden. He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son.

Fortunately, he still has his rich memories, phone calls with his best friend, and his beloved dog Sixten for company. Only now his son is insisting the dog must be taken away. The very same son that Bo is wanting to mend his relationship with before it’s too late.

With everyone telling him they know what’s best, can Bo speak up and make himself heard?

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 1st January 2026 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

When the Cranes Fly South is an eloquent but unsparing depiction of the effects of ageing: the loss of independence, the indignities associated with needing help with the most intimate of activities, the daily reality of physical and/or mental decline.

Not being a dog owner I couldn’t completely relate to Bo’s determination to resist all attempts to part him from Sixten, given he must have known he could no longer care for him in the way the dog deserved. However I could appreciate that Sixten represents the one thing that links Bo to his previous, more active life. And that having lost so much else – his wife to dementia and now living in a care home, his own bodily strength and independence, the prospect of losing his best friend Ture – Sixten provides him with companionship and comfort.

Bo resents his son Han’s interventions, interpreting them as attempts to control his life. I saw it differently, feeling Hans had his father’s best interests at heart. Despite having a demanding job, he makes frequent visits, fills his freezer with food and brings treats he thinks his father might enjoy. His changes are kindly meant and practical, for example the installation of an adjustable bed. The heartbreaking thing is how father and son are unable to connect emotionally. We know Bo has things he’d like to tell Hans, things he regrets not saying but which he cannot find the courage to communicate. So different from when Hans was younger and they used to go on hunting and fishing trips together.

Bo’s thoughts are often drawn to the past and memories of his happy marriage. Sadly, his wife is in the advanced stages of dementia and no longer recognises him, making visits to her care home so traumatic he often avoids them. Again, it’s Hans who steps in with this.

When Bo’s thoughts turn to his childhood it’s of less happy memories. His recollections are of a father who was emotionally withdrawn, short-tempered, even cruel at times. It’s behaviour Bo attempted to avoid with his own son, sadly with limited success.

In the same way Bo knows the cranes will fly south as autumn approaches, the reader knows the end that awaits him. However, knowing this doesn’t make it any less emotional when it happens. Although When the Cranes Fly South is bleak at times, it’s also shot through with humanity exemplified by the case notes left by Bo’s carers which often demonstrate a willingness to go beyond what’s expected. The case notes also provide the reader with a different perspective on Bo’s condition, confirming that he is indeed a very sick man.

This was a book club pick. Everyone agreed it was a remarkable book and it provoked a lot of discussion. For some members who have direct experience of caring for a loved one living with dementia or of navigating the care system, reading the book was an emotional experience but also one rooted in realism.

In three words: Intimate, moving, thought-provoking
Try something similar: Tiny Pieces of Enid by Tim Ewins

About the Author

The idea for Lisa Ridzén’s heartrending debut When the Cranes Fly South came to her through the discovery of notes her grandfather’s care team had left the family as he neared the end of his life. She was also inspired by her research into masculinity in the rural communities of the Swedish far north, where she herself was raised and now lives in a small village outside Östersund.

Lisa began penning the novel whilst attending Långholmen Writer’s Academy. When the Cranes Fly South was a number one bestseller in Sweden, won the overall Swedish Book of the Year, and the Adlibris Prize both for Debut and Fiction of the Year – the first time in the awards’ history that an author has won in two categories. In the UK it was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. Rights have been sold in thirty-nine languages around the world.

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A publication day interview with Micah Thorp, author of Aegolius Creek @TypeEighteenBks

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My guest today is Micah Thorp whose novel, Aegolius Creek is published today by Type Eighteen Books. Congratulations, Micah! Read on as I chat with Micah about Aegolius Creek and the inspiration behind it.

About the Book

Don Karlsson has lived on his family’s Oregon homestead for most of his life. The timber on his land is his greatest asset—planted and replenished by his hand, maintained with his labor and sweat, and harvested for income at his discretion.

After a new species of voles is discovered living in those trees, authorities step in to protect the creatures, and Karlsson fights back. No one can tell him what to do with his property. He enlists the help of his children: Billy, a local who understands his father’s connection to the land; Stacy, a fierce attorney from Boston determined to represent her father’s interests—even if they go against her own; and the beloved and sensitive youngest, Zeke, who organizes local environmentalists to make sure his father does not win.

The impending confrontation engulfs the community and competing interests—local businesses and political groups, infiltrators seeking profit—with the Karlsson family at the center, still trying to reconcile the loss of Don’s wife and their mother, Marlene. Tempers flare, desperate acts are taken, and the courtroom battle spills over into protests and riots, leading to a riveting and stunning conclusion.

Format: Paperback (198 pages) Publisher: Type Eighteen Books
Publication date: 16th September 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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Interview with Micah Thorp, author of Aegolius Creek

What was the inspiration for the story?

The most famous book about western Oregon, Sometimes a Great Notion, was written by Ken Kesey in the 1960s. He was well known for One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest (and a rather eccentric bus ride he took with the Grateful Dead), but Sometimes a Great Notion is considered by many to be his best work. It’s a story about a rural Oregon family running a small timber company in the mid twentieth century.

I grew up not far from where Kesey lived and had relatives in the area described by his Oregon novel. There was a certain culture that existed in the mid twentieth century in rural western Oregon; rugged and very independent, that I understood well. During my youth that culture dramatically changed. Conflict over harvesting timber on public lands pitted the environmental community against local blue-collar workers. The subsequent changes led to the dismantling of much of the industry. I wanted to write about the effect those changes had on the people and communities that went through them.

Why did you particularly want to explore the conflict between individual rights and environmental concerns?

Aside from the conflict that surrounded my upbringing, I think the topic is prescient. We are in the midst of a period in which concerns about climate change are going to be confronted by groups that must give something up to slow global warming. Understanding and resolving these conflicts is necessary to bring about change.

A central problem in these confrontations is a level of certainty that pervades different groups which often undermines the very position they advocate. In Aegolius Creek I tried to carefully balance the differing points of view and let the reader empathize with all of them. This particular conflict (land rights vs environment protection) isn’t particularly unique in the sense that the problem is complicated, while the arguments about it are simplistic. Only when you dig into the details are you confronted by implications of completely adopting one point of view – which is generally destructive. Dialectical thinking isn’t easily adapted by most, but it makes great fodder for a writer.

How important to the story is the book’s setting?

Very. The book is about place, both as a concept and a reality. Aegolius Creek is a fictional place, but quite similar to a number of different rural areas up and down the Willamette Valley. In order to make Aegolius Creek feel real, I devoted a short soliloquy about the Aegolius Creek Valley at the beginning of each chapter, a number of which are based on the real characteristics of real communities.

How did you go about creating your main character, Don Karlsson?

I had family members that could be a pretty easily substitute for Don – hard working, intense and remarkably reflective. He doesn’t change much through the course of the book – he’s an anchor for the story and the other characters revolve around him.

One of the important things I knew I needed to do with Don was detail the complexities of his point of view. It would be hard to empathize with him without his backstory or appreciating his point of view in some detail. With a pretty quiet, austere personality it was important to get inside his head a bit.

Were there any scenes that were particularly challenging to write? If so why?

The climactic scene in the book (which I won’t spoil) was difficult because I wanted to write it from a number of different perspectives all at once without losing any of the emotional punch. It made the sequencing difficult.

One of the things I was aware of as I was writing was juxtaposing point of view and tense. The prologue and epilogue are in first person past tense, from the point of view of a character that isn’t in the rest of the book. In the body of the story I primarily use third person present tense, but there are places where Don’s point of view is italicized in first person present or past tense.

The book has been described as ‘a vision of a disappearing world’. Do you agree with this assessment?

Yes and no….

There were a number of changes that occurred between the 1970s and 2000’s that affected the timber industry and all the communities built around it. The inability to cut timber on public lands obviously had an effect as did the subsidizing of Canadian logging. Automation reduced the number of loggers and millworkers needed. The lost tax revenues timber communities needed to support their public services were initially offset by funding from the federal government, but eventually the lack of jobs led to their decline.

With all these difficulties, the timber industry is still alive, if only a shell of its former self. At its peak Oregon timber harvests were around 10 billion board feet a year. By 2010 they had declined to less than a quarter of that.

Timber communities haven’t gone away, but many are a shell of what they once were.

Thank you, Micah, for such fascinating answers to my questions.

About the Author

Micah Thorp is a physician, writer, and lifelong Oregonian. His research has been published in numerous medical journals, and his short fiction has appeared in various literary journals. His first novel, Uncle Joe’s Muse, won a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award and a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award. His sequel, Uncle Joe’s Senpai, was a finalist for the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award. Micah’s novel, Aegolius Creek, is the recipient of a 2025 IPPY Independent Publisher Book Award: West-Pacific Best Regional Fiction.

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