The Ferryman and His Wife: A Novel
by Frode Grytten
Published November 18, 2025
Drops of blood on a pillowcase and an ominous shade of pink in the toilet bowl signal to Nils Vik that this day, November 18, will be the last day of his life. From its opening image, Frode Grytten’s novel The Ferryman and His Wife announces itself as a meditation on the quiet weight of a life fully lived.
He readies himself in a house heavy with memories of his long dead wife, Marta, and the echoes of his children who have grown and moved away. Methodically, he goes through his mortal routines of bathing and breakfast with a distinct air of finality. The ferry operator, who has spent the entirety of his life on a route along a fjord in Western Norway, makes his way to the water and to his beloved boat one last time.
His dog, Luna, who passed 25 years ago, bounds out to join him. She can now speak, and remains his loyal companion throughout his journey. Through the journal entries that he kept religiously throughout his life, not just about the day’s weather but about the chance encounters and people whom he ferried, Nils steps out of time and space. In the manner of the Greek myth of Charon ferrying dead souls across the Rivers of Acheron and Styx to Hades, the dead from Nils’ past emerge to board his boat.
“They belong to the past, but they exist here and now. You can turn back, Nils. You do know that, don’t you?” Luna asks, to which Nils knowingly replies that he cannot turn back now.
A young man boards the boat, once a troubled teen whom Nils tried to shield from an abusive family and then became Nils’ apprentice. He recounts his death to the only person who had taken care of him in life. “I thought I could drive as fast as I liked,” he tells Nils. “As the water seeped into the car and his mouth and lungs, John grasped his lover’s hand. What a heavenly way to die, he had thought. To die by his lover’s side as the car slowly filled with fjord.”
More dead with their stories join. An American photographer who arrived in Norway by way of Vietnam apologizes for the heartache he caused and reveals his lonely death. A midwife with whom Nils toasted each birth with cognac, an estranged brother with regret flowing faster than the water they traverse, a curmudgeonly teacher who chose the fjord to be close to the married woman whom she loved her entire life. Many others begin to crowd the vessel, each story and life lived adding layers and depth, revealing that Nils’ life was actually an extraordinary one. Through all of this, we see a Norway unfolding and opening up to the greater world. Celebrities, beauty queens, and politicians are peppered in between the stories of farmers and common folk.
All the while, Nils waits patiently for the love of his life. Darting in and through all of these threads is his wife, to whom his heart belonged from the moment he first laid eyes on her. Though their marriage came with obstacles and harm, the lasting memory of love carries this tale to the very end.
It almost seems that this book is meant to be read in the dark and introspective times of the year. A journey of a quietly poetic heart, Grytten’s novel slowly blooms over the pages, twisting and turning like the shoreline of its fjord. Not an action packed tale, but one that lingers, inviting reflection on how we touch the lives around us and how those lives, in turn, remember us.
