WE, THE DROWNED

"Many of us Marstal boys had lost a dad at sea. Our fathers were often away. But then sometimes, out of the blue, they'd be gone forever. Often away and gone forever: the two phrases marked the difference between having a living father and a dead one. It wasn't a big difference, but it was big enough to make us cry when no one was looking.

—page 56, We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

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"The Thrashing Rope" continues the promise of "The Boots." The implied violence of the title seethes in, with, and under the narrative, as the boys of Marstal learn the power of that violence—the loss it can engender, the strength and rebellion it can create, the crushing blows it can deliver. The boys also, by contrast, wonder about the feminine, and how it eludes them. It is more mysterious than the masculinity that confronts them, yet somehow sidestepped and placed away, neglected.

The writing, with its plural first-person narrator (the shifting yet cohesive "we" of the novel's title), it's questions, it's longing, it's wrestling with the sea and death, is rich and chewy, meant to be savored and slowly digested. I am doing just that.