pokkoli

Review of Thomas E. Kennedy's Danish Fall
Volume IV of The Copenhagen Quartet appearing in Book View Ireland/​ The Irish Emigrant selected as Book of the Week

Book of the Week
Danish Fall - Thomas E. Kennedy



The fourth of Thomas E. Kennedy's Copenhagen quartet again gives an intimate view of the city; just as it is possible to find one's way around Dublin through the pages of Joyce's "Ulysses", so it is possible for the stranger to negotiate the streets and squares of Copenhagen through the pages of Kennedy's works. But in addition to the character of Denmark's capital, the author has presented us with a range of international characters whose lives cross at various points of intersection.


The author introduces the reader gradually to the main players, to Harald Jaeger, Birgitte Sommer, Claus Clausen and Frederick Breathwaite, all of whom are manipulated by the "professional down-sizer", Martin Kampman. They are presented as individuals but are soon engaged in an inexorable dance of integration brought on by broken relationships, professional jealousy and ambition, and the search for love, fulfilment and a meaning in life. Their striving is mirrored in the lifestyles of the younger generation, of Frederick's son Jes and Martin's son Adam, both setting out on their own paths and both thus defying their fathers. To a lesser extent this father and son relationship is explored in the character of Jalil, the Afghan shopkeeper whose own son's desire to follow his own path has led to their estrangement.


While the struggle between fathers and sons, bosses and their subordinates dominates the narrative, the women in their lives have a profound effect. Always it is the mothers who keep open the lines of communication with their sons, it is the women who have the power to forgive or to punish and it is women who finally bring some kind of resolution to the lives of Jaegar and Breathwaite, and a more confrontational resolution in the life of the arch manipulator Kampman.


Kennedy writes of the lower points of life, of demotion and dismissal, of divorce and disappointment, but writes with a sardonic humour that relieves the mood and allows the reader to engage with the characters, both young and old. The final novel in the quartet maintains both the standards and the attractions of the three earlier novels on life in Copenhagen.