Group Read, May 2024: By the Open Sea

Our group read for May 2024 is By the Open Sea by August Strindberg. Please join in the read and post any comments on this thread.

Incidentally this novel (I Havsbandet in Swedish) seems to have been translated as both By the Open Sea and On the Seaboard. The latter seems to be more accessible (on Project Gutenberg and Kindle).

I finished the book today. The book concerns a government official who is sent to a remote Swedish island to introduce more advanced fishing techniques. The official treats the task as an intellectual exercise and inevitably rubs everyone up the wrong way. The novel is written entirely from the POV of the aloof official and consequently no other character is fleshed out, resulting in a rather cold and uninteresting novel. However the descriptions of the island and its surrounds are atmospheric.

Just started this yesterday. From the description of the fastidious little man on the boat, who denigrates sailing techniques and doesn’t want to get his gloves wet, you can see that this venture isn’t going to end well.

I'm about half way through now. What strikes me is that Strindberg gave us a way to kind of forgive this horrible man by having him remember his childhood. He was deliberately made into this person! It would be interesting if Strindberg allowed him to change, but I have a feeling this isn't going to happen. He is highly sensitive to nature, at least, so that Strindberg's evocations of the islands make sense.