Father and son are going to spend a summer together at the family farm on the West Coast of Norway. The year is 1983, and the son, Lars Einar, is nine years old.

Lars’ father has been deprived of the inheritance rights to the family farm. He rarely sees his son and has a violent past. He has been graciously allowed to borrow the farm for this summer by his brother.

The story is told in Lars Einar’s words. When he narrates, he is an adult, older than his father ever became. When he first “takes up the pen,” everything revolves around the traumatic relationship with his father, specifically events during one arduous day, where the title The Mountain, the Gun, the Lake are very concrete keywords.

It is a journey too challenging for a young boy, but his love for his father propels him upward, the desire to be seen and acknowledged. For his father, this may be the last chance to be loved; the boy is the last thing he has left after ruining himself over many years.

This journey is the book’s “real-time,” but the narrative constantly shifts back and forth in time. The devotion between father and son, the father’s clumsy care – and, above all, examples of occasional total breakdowns in the father’s care – provide brutal aha moments.

The Mountain, the Gun, the Lake is both shocking and tender. The composition is intricate yet tight, the book is written in a sober but vivid language. Respect for and unity with nature is an underlying theme. However, it is the relationship between father and son that is at stake and ensures intense tension throughout the story.