If you’re familiar with Mankell’s Detective, Wallander, there’s something both comfortably familiar and refreshingly different about this book. Mankell displays a truly rare gift in describing the seemingly trivial inconsequentialities of the main character’s life without the reader wondering where the story is heading or what the relevance of the events described might be. This artfully crafted novel develops against a backdrop involving a muted story surrounding life in an isolated community in the Swedish archipelago that is disturbed by a series of arson attacks starting in the home of the lead character. Whilst there is a perfectly satisfactory story for the reader to follow that stands on its own, the book may be better seen as an almost elegiac review of the lead character’s life that wraps around the events surrounding the arson attacks and the unusual but strangely credible happenings in his personal life. The wistful and strongly felt remembrances of episodes from the lead character’s earlier life beautifully capture the bitter sweet feelings of a person realising that they are in the final chapters of a long life. Highly recommended!

Bleak and not particularly enthralling mystery novel

Known for his Wallander books, Mankell's latest venture is After the Fire. It tells us about Fredrik, our narrator and retired elderly doctor, whose house is burnt down on the remote Swedish island where he lives. The story revolves around his encounter with various people as the mystery of the arson event unravels. Slow-going, it plods along with a good deal of introspection and often emotionless thought. Involving a few other characters, not much happens for most of the book.

As you will have gathered, I was not inspired by this novel and would only recommend it to die-hard Mankel fans.

This is an interesting and atmospheric book dealing with the main characters difficult relationships and the period following a mysterious fire that completely destroyed his home. I found it an absorbing book to take my time over and I found it very rewarding.

Fredrik Welin was born in 1944 and lives on a Swedish archipelago consisting of many small islands, some of which are independently owned. He has inherited the island from his parents. The house which stands thereon was built by his grandfather and is typical of the beautiful hand-built houses famous in Sweden. One night he is woken by a bright light which is the fire which ravages the house and razes it to the ground. He barely escapes with his life and every possession he owns is destroyed.

The story which follows is a chronicle of Fredrik’s life over the next twelve or so months. We get to hear about the local residents and Welin’s family history. He is still considered an outsider in the tight-knit community and suspicion of setting the fire himself takes a concrete form when he receives an anonymous phone call warning him that the police intend to arrest him the following day.

This book is bleak and depressing and focuses on Welin’s ageing and everyone’s mortality. In this respect, it is similar to many other Swedish books and films but it’s quite unlike Mankell’s other books although it shares the depressive mood of the Wallander series for instance.

As to be expected from Mankell, the writing is superb and each individual’s character very finely observed. We get to know Welin extremely well. There is no thought on any subject which is hidden from the reader, from his sexual desire for a journalist, 30 years his junior, to his dark thoughts about his death which every day gets closer and closer – you get the picture.

Despite looking forward to reading another Henning Mankel book I made the mistake of starting it when feeling a little low. My mood spiralled downward very quickly and, although I enjoyed the read, I was more than happy to have finished it. Maybe had I been feeling brighter I would have awarded it the full 5 stars although typically it ends with a whimper, not a bang so 4 stars are probably appropriate.

mr zorg

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

An interesting and atmospheric book.
The main character is Dr Frerik Welin, a retired surgeon, living alone on a Swedish Island. He seems to prefer a life of solitude, broken up by swimming, exploring the local waters, and occasionally sailing to the nearest town.
He wakes one night to find his house has been deliberately set on fire, it is totally destroyed, and the local police are inclined to suspect that he has set the fire.
Fredrik has difficult relationships with other people, amongst those his daughter, Louise, who visits him after the fire. Their ongoing relationship is complicated by the fact that he has only learnt of his
daughter's existence within the last few years, therefore having missed all her childhood years. There also seems to be resentment on Louise's side, she is sometimes physically violent towards her father.This is quite a dark, bleak novel which I feel reflects its setting of a minimalistic life on an isolated island, lived by a man who has very basic people skills despite having been a doctor.
Finally the arsonist is revealed, but not before more houses are burnt. There is an added upbeat note as Fredrik's relationship with his daughter improves and he becomes a grandfather.
Overall I enjoyed the book, finding it intriguing and atmospheric.
Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House UK for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I genuinely have no idea how to describe this novel.

I struggled to connect in any way with the lead character. He's grumpy, irrational, selfish and too contained to like or even to understand, and the insights Mankell gives just aren't frequent enough or deep enough to allow for any empathy or sympathy to develop.

Indeed, there is nobody in this novel you would want to meet or spend any time with. Yes, i get that we;re all fractured human beings, with faults, idiosyncrasies and downright unpleasantnesses (I know, not a word, but it works here) but as we're all surrounded by this all day the need for characters who display the nobler elements of our characters - honesty, generosity, care, concern and kindness - is with me when I read and I am disappointed by any novel where the people are just a bit...meh.

The storyline is also a bit nothing. Yes, things happen, but at no greater pace and with no greater sense of resolution than in real life. I actually read it right to the end just to check for a poignant or even satisfactory finish. Nope.

The writing is fine, but not beautiful. Nothing is stirred, no emotions heightened.

I'm sorry, this one just really isn't for me.

Frederick Welin wakes to find his island house on fire. He barely escapes the flames which destroys the house that had been passed down from his parents. Now 70, he has a disjointed relationship with his daughter who is living in France and is under suspicion of burning down the house himself. Moving into a caravan on the island he finds friendship with a reporter and struggles with both his finances and trying to take the friendship to the next level. A tale of loss, friendship, family, loneliness and fitting in Frederick tries hard to fit all the pieces together. Frederick is not written as a saint and can be an unlikeable character at times but the story is extremely well written and kept me enthralled. Great job.

As ever Mankell's books never fail to make me think and this is no exceptions. A story of life in all it's facets., it held my attention and left me thinking... yes maybe...

I’m not a fan of translated novels…more often than not the text is a little stilted, as the translator is usually a native of the language from which the novel is being translated, English, therefore being the second language. This, from Swedish, wasn’t too bad, although the translator got into a pickle with the past tenses. However, the most annoying thing about this book was that every pronoun ‘I’ was in lower case, every word at the start of the sentence and many proper names didn't start with capital. Is this a Swedish thing? And why wasn’t it picked up by an editor? Five per cent in and I was seriously irked by this, but, as they say on Mastermind, I started so I finished.

I found this book rather dreary and lifeless…like most of the characters. Fredrik Welin is a disgraced retired doctor living alone on an island in the Swedish archipelago. His very mundane and routine life is dramatically overturned when his house is completely burnt down and he loses everything. When the police can find no cause, he is suspected of arson, not really considering that he’s lost his home (one that had been in his family for a number of generations) and just about all his possessions. With only the clothes he was standing in, he then has to deal with his terrible loss, the tragedy heightening his loneliness and purpose in life. Ultimately, of course, he wants to find out who set fire to his house and why.

Fredrik is neither likable nor unlikable. He is bland, a bit feeble and devoid of any personality, so I found it very hard to feel sympathy...or anything...for him. Many of his neighbourhood islanders were the same. As for his daughter (who he’d only recently come to know), she was really rather obnoxious.

Mankell…I realised halfway through the book…was the author of the Wallander novels. I guess if you’re a fan of those, you might like this, the author’s final work before his death in 2015.

But this wasn’t for me…I found myself wanting to shake the characters to get some passion, a spark of life out of them.

Alas, this left me as cold as the icy sea Fredrik Welin swam in every morning.

This was not one for me. I felt it rambled on unnecessarily and never really go going. I gave up about halfway through the book as it didn't appear to be going anywhere

Mankell delivers every time, a solid well crafted story without much sunlight yet intriguing enough to keep you guessing to the end.

Thank you to Netgalley from giving me the opportunity to review this book.

Whilst I was expecting a bit of a thriller/whodunit, what I actually got was a more biographical journey with the main character and the people who come into and out of his life. After a while I forgot that the plot was supposed to be finding the culprit and the reveal of this came second to wanting to know how his own story ended.

I felt that the characters were well written and intriguing and that the book moved along at a steady pace. However, if it's a thrill a minute page turner you're looking for, then I'm afraid this wasn't it.

After The Fire is the story of an elderly man who loses everything when his house is set alight in the middle of the night. Forced to live in a caravan on a remote island, he contemplates the many questions that the event has thrown up: How did it happen? Why did it happen? How can he move on? The book is introspective and – pun not intended – slow burning, and, as if mirroring Frederik’s situation, the prose is stripped back to the essentials. Mankell writes economically, with no extraneous details or emotional embellishment. Whether this is a hallmark of Swedish writing or the author’s own style I don’t know, but I didn’t connect with the plain prose of this book. I found it to be disjointed in places, with a lot of odd throwaway remarks about events in the character’s past that had no particular bearing on the story. Perhaps it was the author’s intention to be a little directionless as he tried to reach some kind of understanding about what had happened to him; if so, I didn’t find it effective. I am grateful to the publisher for my review copy of this book. However, I feel that it wasn’t quite for me.

This book asks a simple question: what remains of one's life once your house and all your belongings have gone up in flames? The answer is anything but simple.
With a cast of misfits who appear to be separated from each other by far more than the water that runs between the islands and skerries of the Archipelago, and the mainland beyond, Mankell drew me effortlessly into the book from the first sentence, and held me there until the final sentence.
Bleak and yet ultimately life-affirming, this is a masterly look at what getting old means for the central character, who has more than a trace of Wallander about him. He examines his life through his memories which are thrown into relief by his current situation, This multi-layered book shows an author at the peak of his craft.

After the Fire by Henning Mankell, translated by Marlaine Delargy, is not standard crime fiction and although there are crimes committed they are not the main focus of the book. Living alone on an isolated island in the Swedish archipelago, Fredrik, a retired doctor, is devastated by the fire which destroyed the house he had inherited from his grandparents. He has nothing left apart from a boathouse, where he had set up an improvised surgery, a caravan (belonging to his daughter, Louise), and a boat. Suspected by the police of starting the fire, he tries to discover the culprit.

But the main emphasis of the book is on his reflections on life, death, ageing, and loneliness. I found it absolutely fascinating as Fredrik looks back over his life. His relationship with his daughter, Louise, who he hadn’t known about until she was an adult, is difficult – he knows almost nothing about her. However this changes when she comes to the island to decide what to do next and he gets more involved in her life.

Told in the first person by Fredrik it goes into detail about his fears of dying and the difficulties of understanding other people and both beginning and maintaining relationships. He has no real friends and only knows a handful of people living on the islands. There is Jansson, a hypochondriac, the former postman, a snooper who read all the postcards he delivered, Oslovski, who he describes as a strange woman his contact with her is only to the extent of checking her blood pressure from time to time and parking his car outside her house on the mainland. Then there is Lisa, a journalist who writes for the local paper, a new acquaintance who interviews him about the fire and Nordin who owns the chandlery.

It’s beautifully written and I was entranced. I found it all very real, the people, the places and the mystery. It is both a character study and a meditation on the complexities of life and death. Once I began reading I just didn’t want it to end.

A slow burn, and then the reader is pinioned by ice – with no Wallander in sight

Mankell’s last book, published after his death, is one of several he wrote which were free of the detective genre, though crimes there are, and trying to understand the who and the why is part of the journey made, by the central character, and the reader.

After the Fire takes up a story already followed some years ago, in his 2006 Italian Shoes (translated into English in 2009) This was meant to be a series, I believe, as the book was described as the first in the Fredrik Welin series. This is now the second, and final one, translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Firstly, rest assured, you do not have to have read Italian Shoes in order to understand or enjoy this. I did do so, back in the day, but have forgotten most of it, though I recollected its melancholy tone. Central character, in both novels is retired surgeon, Fredrik Welin. Welin was in late middle age in the first book, retired from his profession after a mishap, and retreated to a gloomy, dark, half resentful half embracing isolation on a sparsely populated island in the Swedish archipelago. His was not a character who handled humanity at large up close and personal well :

“The view from the window was the same as the view in many other countries. The densely packed traffic induced in me a feeling of despair about the world into which I had been born and in which I happened to live. What were these people, many of them alone in their cars, thinking? Were they thinking at all?”

Welin is now in his 70s. He is not a likeable man, not one to warm to. He dislikes most people. He had a difficult relationship with his estranged wife (the trajectory of Italian Shoes involved her final illness and death) and a challenging relationship with the daughter he never knew he had. This challenging relationship still continues, and is, for the most part, full of occasional unsatisfactory phone and internet communications.

Mankell has not given us a character to easily empathise with. He is irascible, suspicious, gloomy, self-sufficient and, at the same time, needy. He knows he lacks easy ability to make and keep friendships – though, nonetheless his fellow eccentric island dwellers – all pretty much those preferring isolation to connection, - seem to have affection for him. He is also lustful, and still dreams of a romantic connection, though he feels somewhat foolish for holding these yearnings.

An inexplicable fire in Welin’s home, which appears to have been deliberately started, alarming the community, is the precipitation of a whole series of events which challenge his long, settled into a somewhat grumpy, predictable existence. Firstly, he is suspected of having started the fire himself, in order to make a fraudulent insurance claim. Partly to clear himself, he begins to try and investigate. A local journalist becomes a kind of friend and fellow investigator. Further fires happen in the homes of others on the archipelago. The original fire, completely burning down Welin’s home brings him back into better contact with his difficult, also dysfunctional, adult daughter. The home, after all, would have been her inheritance.

“I went up to the counter and explained that I had no bank cards and no ID; everything had been lost in the fire. The clerk recognised me but didn’t seem to be quite sure what to do. A person without any form of ID always constitutes some kind of threat nowadays”

Now, this probably does not sound like the most absorbing read – but, if you are someone who likes books about complex, tangled, difficult human relationships, and the challenges, particularly between parents and their adult children, as the ravages of age and time lend an urgency to some kind of reconciliation and understanding – I would say this will be indeed, absorbing.

The ‘crime’ – who the arsonist is – may be obvious to the reader quite early – but the ‘solving’ isn’t the point of the book – it is Welin’s journey, where he must come to understand himself, and others, which matters. After I had settled into the realisation this was not a novel about action, but one of unfolding reflection, I was hooked

Ageing, death, loneliness, redemption, finding a meaning, in the face of there being none.

“One day I will walk through into the land where memory has been swallowed up by forgetfulness”

All, beautifully written. Mankell always one to think into meaning, always writing about wider than individuals

Escapist fiction this is surely not.

I received this as an ARC from the publishers, via NetGalley

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK for providing me with an ARC in order to provide an unbiased review.

This is the first Henning Mankell book I have read. A stand alone it is published after his death. It is the story of a 70 year old man, Fredrik, who awakes in the middle of the night with his house on fire. He escapes, just in time. The police cannot find a suspect so focus their investigation on Fredrik. This is not a crime novel beyond an interview with Frederick we hear very little of their investigation. It is rather the slow, almost tedious, telling of the way in which Fredrik who has had his home, his belongings all lost in the fire copes, behaves and responds to his loss. Fredrik is not a likeable character. He re-unites with his daughter because of the fire but it is a strained relationship. We learn something of his younger life. We meet a number of other characters in his life, hardly friends as Fredrik is a solitary sole. The book moves to Paris, where his daughter lives and has been arrested, before returning to his island. There were moments I appreciated, found interesting but not enough to find this a particularly enjoyable read. In the Fire is well written and the descriptive writing is at times wonderful.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Random House UK and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.
I read it in the hope that it was going to come exciting as I continued, but no. I found that it was hard to read as it was going back and forth into the character's past so often and in so many different periods of his past that I struggled to keep my concentration going. I found myself scanning huge amounts of pages as some of the flashes were quite tedious.
I did feel for his existence as a lonely old man, but he liked it mostly, the solitude and his life. I was willing him to make more of an effort with his daughter but he didn't seem to know how to.
This is quite a depressing book in my opinion and I was a little let down by it, as I am a fan of the Wallander TV series. I will try one more of his books before I write him off completely.
I appreciate that this was a joint collaboration after his death

Secker was a new author to me. I really enjoyed reading this book. I was wrapped up in the characters lives. Frederick was a lovely character. Trying to find out who had burned down his home and at risk of being charged for it himself I loved how the story unfolded. Although he hardly knew his daughter he was there for her in her hour of need. Following their journey as they got to know each other was compelling. About two thirds of the way though the book I sussed out the perpetrator of the fires. A very interesting ending.

I've been reading Henning Mankell's books for at least fifteen years, especially his crime novels. This was a bit different, firstly because it was told by the victim in first person. Fredrik is a very unreliable narrator as he tries to navigate the year after he loses his house to an arson attack. Frightened that the police will blame him and confused by his daughter Louise's behaviour, he follows her to Paris to help her get out of prison and discovers more about her secret life. Never really knowing other people is a theme of this book.

A well-written and gripping novel, worthy of being his last work.