Nothing can be like it was: Merete Morken Andersen and Oceans of Time

Oceans have a way of closing in behind you. For a moment, you are there, bobbing in the briny water with the sun glancing off your skin. Then you are under, gone without a trace as those you've left behind search for answers to your disappearance. In much the same way, suicide is a death that defies description; it is a disappearance that seeks explanation, not in the act itself, but in the waves that have engulfed it. It is this sort of shadow-play that has propelled Norwegian author Merete Morken Andersen's Oceans of Time to international recognition.

The book begins with an ending: the suicide of sixteen-year old Ebba, who leaves home to hangs herself in a nearby wooded area. What follows is an elaborate re-examination of the events leading up not only to her death, but also to her existence itself, as divorced parents Johan and Judith are forced to come to terms with her suicide and to a certain extent, submit to the ineffability of that departure.

In her essay "Forvandlingsområdet", which appeared in Vinduet of March, 2003, Andersen explains that part of the inspiration for the book comes from the suicide of her own aunt Inger, who hung herself one day while her husband was out doing errands. She writes,

Det er et slikt øyeblikk der man er brutalt overgitt til seg selv, sin egen samvittighet, sine egne voldsomme og forvirrede tanker. Det står ingen og smiler og vinker mot bussvinduet, ingenting kan bli som det var.

I slike øyeblikk begynner en ny historie, for noe må noe forandre seg, historien må skrives om, - historien om tante Inger, og om meg selv, og med den alle de andre historiene som har hektet seg på underveis. Slike historier utgjør et finmasket nett som kan begynne å rakne når den første masken glir ut.

It is such a moment that man is brutally handed over to himself, his own conscience, his own violent and confused thoughts. No one is smiling and waving out the bus window, nothing can be like it was.

In such a moment begins a new story, for something must something change, the story must be written about - the story about aunt Inger, and myself, and with all the other stories that have hooked themselves along the way. Stories like this amount to a finely meshed net that can begin to unravel when the first stitch gives out.