A moose walks into a rural Maine town called Oslo. Pierre Roy, a brilliant twelve-year-old, loses his memory in an accident. Three families are changed for worse and better as they grapple with trauma, marriage, ambition, and their fraught relationship with the natural world.
Meet Claude Roy, Pierre’s blustery and proud fourth-generation Maine father who cannot, or will not, acknowledge the too real and frightening fact of his son’s injury. And his wife, Celine, a once-upon-a-time traditional housewife and mother who descends into pills as a way of coping. Enter Sandra and Jim Kimbrough, musicians and recent Maine transplants who scrape together a meager living as performers while shoring up the loose ends by attempting to live off the grid. Finally, the wealthy widow from away, Edna Sibley, whose dependent adult grandson is addicted to 1980’s Family Feud episodes. Their disparate backgrounds and views on life make for, at times, uneasy neighbors. But when Sandra begins to teach Pierre the violin, forces beyond their control converge. The boy discovers that through sound he can enter a world without pain from the past nor worry for the future. He becomes a pre-adolescent existentialist and invents an unconventional method to come to terms with his memory loss, all the while attempting to protect, and then forgive, those who’ve failed him.
Oslo, Maine is a character driven novel exploring class and economic disparity. It inspects the strengths and limitations of seven average yet extraordinary people as they reckon with their considerable collective failure around Pierre’s accident. Alliances unravel. Long held secrets are exposed. And throughout, the ever-present moose is the linchpin that drives this richly drawn story, filled with heartbreak and hope, to its unexpected conclusion.
Reviews
“Bear with me, because the moose isn’t necessarily the protagonist of Butler’s latest novel. But she might be its beating heart, because her perspective—which opens the book—is so wild and twitchy and instinctive yet also so universal and beautiful and meaningful. Some readers might remember, from Butler’s amazing memoir The Skin Above My Knee, that she was for many years an accomplished oboist, and it’s from 15 years of experience playing in a Maine chamber festival that she draws on to create her wild and beautiful view of a small town in that state where music works on many people’s instincts in many ways. Please don’t blame me, however, if the sections with the moose make you weep; they aren’t necessarily traumatic, but the author’s deep compassion for a different species means that you will wonder why more writers don’t choose to include all manner of beasts in their narratives.”
–Bethanne Patrick, Literary Hub
“Butler writes beautifully and with depth, each character mined for internal gems…The personalities that occupy Oslo, Maine are sufficiently intriguing to buoy this peculiarly engrossing tale.”
–Lauren O’Brien, Shelf Awareness
“Butler’s characters are such complex, authentically flawed humans, you can’t help but root for them. But then there’s the moose…Butler’s moose is a moose, and we never lose that essential fact. It was a brilliant choice to open the novel in the moose’s perspective to immediately establish her stakes in the story… Oslo, Maine is an engaging, wonderfully nuanced novel.”
–Jaimee Wriston, New York Journal of Books
“The fictional, titular town hosts a complicated page-turner of a story spurred by the fallout from a young boy’s violent run-in with a moose, and though the pacing is breezy, the grappling with interpersonal and interspecies relationships is not.”
—Will Grunewald, Down East Magazine
“For all their furtiveness, the flawed but deeply relatable characters in Butler’s second novel … exude an authentic sense of humanity, making this a sure-fire recommendation for Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove) fans.”
—Booklist
A Mighty Blaze – Conversation with Adrienne Brodeur
Lit Hub – The Anxiety of Influence
The National Book Review: Q&A with Susan Henderson
Author Stories Podcast with Hank Garner
Largehearted Boy Essays and Playlist
Kenyon Review Q&A with Geeta Kothari
The Millions Q&A with Richard Russo
Advance Praise
“In her impressive new novel OSLO, MAINE, Marcia Butler offers readers a seductive, imaginative, and utterly unique story; an astute and compassionate foray into the intersecting lives of characters who are both ordinary and exceptional, saintly and deeply flawed. I raced through this novel in one breathless sitting. Highly recommended!”
– Karen Dionne, #1 internationally bestselling author of THE WICKED SISTER
“OSLO, MAINE is an enchantment; I read it in two sittings, utterly absorbed, spellbound by this world where everyone–even a mother moose–has secrets and hidden yearnings (and unexpected capacities), and where even damage can prove to be a redemptive gift. Marcia Butler is a master dramatist, a sorceress, and extraordinary novelist; this book will break your heart and heal it.”
– E.J. Levy – author of Love, In Theory and forthcoming, The Cape Doctor
“Wildly plotted, astutely observed, and brimming with wit, “Oslo, Maine” briskly unfurls its central mystery, portraying a motley brand of Mainers with precision, and causing unsuspecting readers to become deeply invested in the plight of a moose and her calf. Marcia Butler explores the blunt, hard follies of human nature with verve and humor in this innovative and charming novel.”
—Adrienne Brodeur, author of the national best-selling memoir Wild Game
“A Moosetagonist, a musician reluctantly teaching, neighbors with guns, neighbors with drug problems, neighbors whose kid owns a beautiful mind, a wealthy patron, a literal-minded simple scion, a lover, another, a husband, a violin: the other Maine. Marcia Butler has pulled all these elements and much more together into one sweeping tale of love and redemption, a lot of laughs along the way, and sorrow, too, flights of transcendence, an aria sung by a moose who knows more than the rest of us what it is to be alive. Oslo, Maine is richly satisfying, a book for a quiet afternoon, a cup of tea, music in the background. Don’t mind that big soft nose at the window: the moose has come for you.”
–Bill Roorbach, author of The Girl of the Lake, The Remedy for Love, and Life Among Giants
“How do we cope with the unimaginable? Maybe, says Marcia Butler, in her brilliant new novel, we do it with the unimaginable. When 12-year-old Pierre Roy loses his memory in an accident, three Maine families, a crosscut of cultures and classes, are at loose ends about what to do. Instead, it’s up to one boy and the incredible sound from one violin, to change and challenge everything everyone thought they knew. Gorgeously written and hauntingly told, Butler’s novel, about love, forgiveness, and yes, coming to terms with our failures, is as breathtaking as Maine itself.
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World