Shutterspeed

‘Fever liquefied the days. I fancied I could smell ether or carbolic acid.

‘I fancied I heard wheelchairs rolling squeakily down a hallway long ago, in some castle or other full of nymphs in winged head-dresses and wards with row upon row of dazzling white beds in which the sick lay wrapped in sheets like caterpillars in silken cocoons.’

Shutterspeed, Erwin Mortier’s deceptively simple tale of an adolescent boy growing up in a Flemish village with his aunt and uncle, is full of such beautiful, spare writing. Its inclusion on the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist is no surprise.

Joris has lived with his Aunt Laura and Uncle Werner for most of his life, ever since his father died and his mother went away to live in Spain, unable to cope with the death of her husband and the pressures of bringing up a child. His surrogate parents are caring but strict, doing their best to bring up a child they didn’t expect to be looking after.

Werner is a repository of contented, twinkling charm, with a ready wink for Joris; Laura can be harsh (‘when she was angry she would wrench open her store of aggravation and tip it out over my or my uncle’s head’), but there is a sense of disappointment as much as anger behind her outbursts. Their love for each other is, however, undoubtedly real and deeply felt.

As Joris struggles with the uncertainties of adolescence (two encounters with a spiteful, manipulative girl; a spectacularly embarrassing public calamity) he probes the mystery of his father’s death and wonders when, if ever, his mother will return.

Mortier inhabits Joris’s character with deft certainty. The boy is confused by the cryptic comments adults make, repulsed by the girl’s lips squelching uninvitingly against his (‘it was utterly revolting’), and humiliated when he wets the bed.

Like the water sliding languidly beneath Joris’ feet ‘in his favourite summer spot for doing nothing’, Mortier’s prose – in Ina Rilke’s shimmering translation – has an icy clarity that is gentle and quietly moving.