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This little book is a hilarious, thoughtful, charming, magical gem of a novel, – part fable, and all heart. As laugh-out-loud-funny as it is pure whimsy, the humor in this read is dry, sardonic and continuous, layered with a silliness born of a sort of sweet, childish, eccentricity and deep ties to Mother Nature that no one seems to understand better than the Scandinavians.

Andreas Doppler, our narrator, a fortyish Norwegian curmudgeon (who just may be the most singular character ever to grace the pages of a book) is having a gigantic mid-life crisis. Or is he?

Reeling from the recent death of his father, and struggling with a relationship now left without closure (needless to say, a strange relationship and an even stranger father), when Doppler falls off his beloved bicycle and hits his head on a rock, he suddenly finds himself seeing his life in a whole new light.

As Doppler suddenly abandons his wife and two children, a great job, a nice house in Oslo and his entire settled, sedentary life to move into a tent in the Norwegian forest, he appears to all to be in meltdown mode.

Reconnecting with huge existential questions regarding meaning and life in the primitive forest, things take a turn for the wackier as Doppler befriends a young moose calf, whom he names Bongo. From dependent youngster to defiant teenager, the anthropomorphic Bongo becomes the perfect child, mentee, and companion for Doppler, who soon finds himself deep in the thralls of a full-blown anti-consumerist obsession, with no interest in human interaction (or conventionality).

A somewhat reluctant hero (really more of an anti-hero), the story of Doppler and his journey, and those he cannot help but touch along the way, is pure delight from start to finish.

I loved this book, and absolutely loved these characters.

Read in translation from the original Norwegian, and published by #HouseofAnansiPress, this is the first book of three in the Doppler series. It’s unclear if the others are available in English, but you can be sure this reader will be looking out for them.