Revolver
It’s 1910. In a small cabin situated north of the Arctic Circle, young Sig Andersson sits alongside his father’s frozen body, wondering how he could have died the way he did, falling through a weak-spot in the iced lake when he should have known better than that. He is waiting for his sister and stepmother to come back from the main town nearby with help, when there is a knock at the door. It is a stranger, a Gunther Wolff, who claims to have searched Sig’s father for years and is convinced that the dead man stole his gold ten years ago. Despite Sig’s proclamations that there is no gold – as their poverty proves – Wolff will not leave until he has it, by any means necessary. Sig can only think of one way to protect himself – his father’s most prized possession, an old Colt revolver, hidden in the storeroom. If only he could get to it… Then, his sister comes back, all alone.
Flashbacks set 11 years earlier are interspersed throughout. They fill us in about Sig’s parents’ lives in Nome, a small settlement of gold miners in Alaska where they hope to change their lot in life. When his father, Einar, becomes an assay clerk for the mining company and meets Wolff, a local troublemaker, tragedy strikes – and that’s where the story begins.
There is an economy of language in Revolver that fits beautifully with this stark tale. Sig’s family’s meagre existence in the wilderness of the Arctic is endured in the hopes of a better life one day. The setting is equally bleak – the barren landscape, the deep cold, the utter desolation and isolation of the extreme North are felt at every single turn of page. Yet, there is never a sense of desperation. Sig’s memories of his parents are a mixture of stern parenting and harsh love. There are flashbacks that describe a family who tries to do better the only way they can. Sig remembers his father’s love for the Colt and the beauty of its mechanics, as well as his mother’s questioning of that very love – how can someone love a Gun, a thing that is meant to hurt others?
That economy of language accompanied with the shortness of this book, create a first impression that Revolver is a simple, straightforward tale. Therein lies the brilliance of this story that is deceptively simple and the measure of its true complexity only becomes really clear when the story ends. There is no wasted moment in this book: the memory of the day long gone when a boy shoots a gun is as important as the small detail of a father’s oily hair. The storytelling is brilliant not only in that way but also how it combines past and present, not to mention how the characters are utterly clever in a way that is never directly expressed to the reader. Therefore, the story is a triumph of showing versus telling.
The main theme of Revolver is the question of how one boy comes to age, how he does that by being true to both of his parent’s truths – different as they are – and at the same time, finding his own truth somewhere in between. This is a story about the harsh reality of the North, about gold mining and the terrible consequences of putting faith in passing dreams, about poverty and desperation and wanting to do better for one’s family, about obsession and thoughtless violence. Above all, it is a story about a young boy and the choice he has to make.
