The Morning Star

I try to avoid reading reviews before reading a book. However, this was a long audiobook, so I decided to take a peak. The first review I found described the tedium of the book. Uh oh! I did not have high hopes. However, the book pleasantly surprised.

The book follows the lives of a number of everyday people meandering around contemporary Norway. There are the normal conflicts and struggles of everyday life. There are also a few unusual things that happen. The members of an occult teenage rock band are found murdered in a gruesome fashion. There is also a new star that appears in the sky. Some of the characters interact with these events. Others don't.

Then near the end, the novel gets "weird". There is a long essay discussing death. It would fit in well in a philosophy book, but seems a little out of place in the novel. There is other analysis of religion, science and ways that we seek to understand the world. Some of the characters "see" the dead and have some struggles with them. This relates to the death essay, but also brings what was a fairly natural novel into a supernatural realm. These various twists and turns are well written and stand fairly well on their own, but feel a little odd together.