In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision
of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the
window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day
when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her
memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the
bonds of family and the battles with implacable nature stretching back
over five generations, to Asle's great-great-grandmother Aliss. In Jon
Fosse's vivid, hallucinatory prose, all these moments in time inhabit
the same space, and the ghosts of the past collide with those who still
live on. Aliss at the Fire, is a visionary masterpiece, a haunting
exploration of love and loss that ranks among the greatest meditations
on marriage and human fate.
