SILENCE IN OCTOBER

This spare new novel by acclaimed Danish author Grøndahl tells the story of a dissolving marriage in a complex, elliptical and moving way. At the book's start, a Danish art historian wakes up in Copenhagen to find that his wife, Astrid, is leaving him. The novel then traces the events leading up to this separation. The art historian met his now departed wife while driving a cab to put himself through grad school; she happened to hail him the day she left her first husband. She sought refuge with her cabbie, and the two of them ended up together for 18 years. During the course of their marriage, the art historian falls in love with a sculptor while visiting New York on business. Though his great intelligence affords him many insights, it does not keep his private life from falling into disarray. Grøndahl carves out a convincing milieu for his protagonist, with numerous believable characters, including the alternately sensible and volatile Astrid and various sly denizens of the art world. Images and events from the present and the past are seamlessly blended so that single sentences or paragraphs sometimes span years. Grøndahl's Proustian game playing with the strictures of time is seductive and often captivating, a narrative tightrope that he walks without a stumble. He sprinkles the book, as well, with knowing observations about human nature, characters' perceptions of each other and memory itself, lending his tale a poetic depth that never ceases to surprise. (Oct.)