And The Scandinavians Win Again

Machine by Danish writer Peter Adolphsen is about the untimely drowning of a fox-terrier sized horse from the Pleistocene period. It is also about a one-armed Russian immigrant named Jimmy Nash (nee Djamolidine Hasanov) and his brief, unconsummated affair with one Clarissa Sanders, a doomed Austinite of above-average intelligence. The two stories are inextricably intertwined in ways both chemical and metaphysical. To sum up: the horse's heart winds up as a drop of fuel that ignites in the tank of a car driven by Ms. Sanders with Jimmy Nash in the passenger seat. The author draws out the relationship between the two plotlines via biological examinations of everything from death to oil refineries to acid trips over the course of fewer than 100 pages. It is a tiny book that will take you about an hour and a half to read. Afterwards, your brain will feel cleaner and more orderly somehow, as though somebody up there took a trip to Ikea and reorganized your thought space.