Il Tribunale degli Uccelli FugleTribunalet by Agnes Ravatn

Il Tribunale degli Uccelli FugleTribunalet by Agnes Ravatn published

• by Marsilio is a powerful book for sure, because will act psychologically and at different levels on the readers. If you have a certain imagination you will notice it. Plus this tale will also put in evidence the profound and distorted relationship of a sick person in confrontation with women.

While I was reading this book I thought that I would have run away as soon as possible from a guy like Sigurd Bagge being extremely talkative; that man was so closed that you had to pay attention at what you said him and the way you said that, words you used for expressing your thoughts couldn't be wrong and so on. Just this a real nightmare!

The story: Allis is an important TV presenter, but she cheated her husband with someone more powerful. People discovered in a pretty devastating way their relationship. She escaped away; without husband, technically Allis is still married of course but... without lover; without anyone.

Without anymore a good reputation and she is jobless, of course. One day he reads that someone needs a housemaid for cooking, keeping clean the garden, the house. Allis thinks that maybe, leaving the city, leaving her old life will be just reason for bettering her emotional situation.

Sure: that house is isolated, that man, all alone in the house a sort of bear. A 40s year old bear, absolutely attractive but at the same time with something wrong in his heart; he doesn't love to communicate at all; he doesn't love to interact with Allis.

Allis tries her best. She doesn't know gardening but slowly she improves; she discovers a notebook with a lot of recipes in the kitchen and she will cook always great meals.

The man is married but the lady is strangely disappeared somewhere. Allis is curious to understand where Bagge's wife disapperead developing at the same time a sort of jealousy for this mysterious lady. A lady, surely with a lot of qualities. A musician.

She imagines her tiny, slim body; her class and grace.

What Allis doesn't know is the profound attachment of Bagge for wine and liquors in general. Allis, there is to add, will be of great company in this sense.

I consider Bagge a bipolar person; someone absolutely not in grade of understanding the dynamics of life; the dynamics not just of unhappiness, but the ones of happiness as well. Bagge would want an exclusive, quiet total control on the other person, something that no one should have. Not in this sick way.

The rural life is beautiful and the imagine portraid by Allis, a life spent with him 'till the end (maybe in a too isolated way also if the relationship an healthy one) absolutely rational: the problem is that when there are people like Bagge around, you can't never know what they think and when they can break also the most beautiful moment of happiness.

I thought: why a man became a complication for others so big? Was it because of his childhood? Because of a unhappy past?

The result of the actions of Bagge can't be circumscribed "in the now," but in a past of desolation, in a past where no one took great care for this ex kid; or just, it is part of his human nature, his abuse of alcohol, a constant unhappiness, a constant being unsecure of himself and the other ones; his inability of giving trust to anyone, and his inability of believing in what others are saying him with open hearts and sincerity.

It's the normality that becomes abnormality that in this book will shock you the most. Coping with a guy like Bagge also not in this scenario is never simple.

I love this books also because the narration is precise, punctual, vivid,  dreaming, scaringly true.

The title of the book is referred at a Bagge's dream where he is judged by a tribunal of birds.

Not only: the book will also reveal the entire story of Baldr, killed thanks to the help of a beautiful Christmas's apparently, innocuous plant: the mistletoe. It's beautiful, I treated it in another review and I leave you the joy of a complete explanation of this myth, following Allis's words.

Highly recommended.

I thank Marsilio Editori for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori