Up front, I’ll just say I didn’t much like Roy Jacobsen’s The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (2005; tr: Don Bartlett & Don Shaw, 2007), the first of his books that I’ve read, and one I really should have approached earlier seeing as it’s been loitering on my shelves for eighteen years. 

The title has more than a whiff of marketing strategy behind it, as if aimed squarely at the nascent TV book club trend at the time. The original Norwegian title, Hoggerne (‘The Loggers’), feels more appropriate for a book more interested in its people than its titular town. Indeed, the English title seems a disconnect from a crucial metaphor that likens men to trees in that both can be felled during war.

Set in 1939 Finland, this is the relatively quiet story of Timo, a logger who stays on while his village is evacuated and razed. While some consider him a fool for remaining, he’s more canny than he lets on, and over the course of the Winter War (a brief conflict between Finland and the Soviets) he works with Soviet POWs to fell trees for the occupying forces. But is his act ultimately one of treason or simply survival?

Through Timo, Jacobsen explores resilience during war and comradeship among supposed enemies and across language barriers while capturing the sorts of small moments in war unrecorded by the larger historical narrative. But, with plain characters, little introspection, and barely any narrative propulsion, it’s all so damned plodding and uninteresting: you carry on reading only for fear of being shot for desertion. 

Reading about the historical Battle of Suomussalmi, notable for its remarkable Finnish victory against the Soviet Goliath, it’s a shame that in the theatre of war, all the real action takes place offstage. However, across its story Timo boldly navigates the war, helping other loggers survive alongside him before they go their separate ways. The novel’s coda – a quiet fizzle – offers a moment for reflection: even once war ends, those like Timo who experienced it need time to find their own peace.