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An excellent, brutal, smart, nihilistic, philosophical coming-of-age story, in which a group of seven-graders search for meaning. But first, they must lose so much.

“And although we'd sworn we'd never become like them, that was exactly what was happening. We weren't even fifteen yet.
Thirteen, fourteen, adult, dead.��

Since I recently moved to Denmark, I’ve been thinking I should start reading more Danish fiction. As a child, I used to read lots of Scandinavian literature, but for some reason drifted away from those books. And this creepy little novella is a great way to get back on track!

In a small fictional Danish town, which looks no different from real small Danish towns all around, a boy suddenly decides nothing has a meaning. He stops going to school and spends his days sitting in a tree, shouting at his classmates about the meaninglessness of it all.

Naturally, his classmates have to prove him wrong. And in their youthful curiosity, they plunge into a quest to discover the meaning. How? By collecting objects and symbols that mean something to someone, piling them on and on in an abandoned sawmill in an evergrowing heap. The Heap of Meaning.

Only, for the heap to have a meaning, they need to give up objects that really mean something to them. They don’t trust each other to willingly make a sacrifice, and so each child chooses what the next one will give up. The requests quickly escalate in importance and gruesomeness, and while initially many push back, at the end the group forces everyone to comply and give up more and more.

I have only one criticism: The children are supposed to be 14, but they sounded younger. Just the way they were thinking, speaking, interacting, and the things they were doing, it sounded to me like something younger children would say or do.

Other than that, the book felt very real. I’ve seen some reviewers complain it was unrealistic that in a small town children would spend months collecting gruesome objects and no one would notice. Those statements surprised me. Children do have secret lives and get away with a lot of stuff all the time. Just thinking of all the mischief and complex schemes we’ve been doing as kids, with no adults finding out, and a small town is an ideal place for this to happen. For me, the children’s secret plots felt very true.

Apart from my thoughts on the age, the author did a wonderful job capturing children’s minds. Children can be cruel, vindictive, and not thinking of consequences. The purpose of the heap of meaning is quickly twisted, everyone aiming to hurt. And they can also be kind and supportive, and curious. Always searching, finding meaning in things adults would not always understand. The kids we meet here are not nice, but they are real.

But then, they have to grow up:

“We cried because we had lost something and gained something else. And because it hurt both losing and gaining. And because we knew what we had lost but weren't as yet able to put into words what it was we had gained.��

The book asks so many questions. Does anything have meaning to anyone? Treasured objects, memories, religion, love for one’s country, innocence, abilities? Do these things lose their value if we share them? If we sell them for money? And if they can lose this meaning, did they ever have meaning at all? The children must learn harsh lessons, and in the process become the adults they never wanted to be. Losing the meaning is a rite of passage, towards the search for new meanings.

On a separate note, while this story could have happened nearly anywhere, I enjoyed it how now that I’m more familiar with Danish society, I kept recognizing the typically Danish things. The style of names and nicknames, the high divorce rates, the obsessions with the flag that has supposedly descended from heaven. I’ll definitely check the author’s other works.