companions [christina hesselholdt]

Companions is a chunky novel, composed of monologues spoken by five different characters: Alma, Camilla, Alwilda, Kristian and Edward, all of them Danish. The novel opens with Alma and Kristian, a couple, on holiday in the UK, retracing Wordsworth’s steps and recounting the visit from their differing perspectives. It also provides, for a British audience, the fascinating  experience of viewing one’s homeland through a European lens. The writer uses her scalpel to slice up their soon-to-be-doomed relationship. The literary references continue with visits to the homes of the Brontës and Virginia Woolf. The novel operates on all kinds of levels, and it’s a luminous, absorbing opening.

The format of the novel, this succession of monologues, suggests an extension of this fractal pattern. Something along the lines of a roman á clef, divided by five. This suggestion is deceptive. In fact, Camilla emerges as the dominant voice, with Alma as the secondary one. The other three characters have cameo roles, nothing more. Camilla’s relationship with her mother gradually establishes itself as the book’s dominant theme. The engaging, worldly Camilla and the more phlegmatic Alma (who is a novelist) begin to feel like twin manifestations of the author’s id. The two women dovetail memories, share journeys together. The novel rambles. It has no set destination. The event which draws the book to its conclusion seems slightly Hollywood. In the end Companions has the feel of a memoir as much as a novel, even though we have no way of knowing whether Camilla and Alma’s anecdotes are drawn from the author’s life or are entirely fictitious. 

The writing retains a savvy, erudite tone. These are strong Danish women, whose romanticism is kept in check. They visit Sylvia Plath’s home, but neither are the type to put their head in an oven, in spite of a history of attempted suicide in Camilla’s family. At times it almost feels as though both women pine for that Brontëan moment, which history and culture has neglected to give them. Instead, Camilla and Alma substitute a restless, Proustian roving through their history, a sublimation of the lived passion which eludes them, or in which the writer has less interest. It’s perhaps revealing that when Alma does start a relationship with one of the other narrators, Edward, this happens almost entirely off-screen, so to speak. This is a novel which skirts passion; one which is more preoccupied with the binds of friendship or family. To what extent this might be a Danish trait is hard to know; although there are echoes of Vinterberg’s The Commune.