A Fairy Tale

The latest from Danish author Bengtsson (Submarino) focuses on the relationships between fathers and sons. A young boy bounces around Copenhagen with his father, a loving but seemingly unstable man who moves restlessly from apartment to apartment and job to job. The boy, who shows a talent and love for drawing, is homeschooled and nourished on elaborate fairy tales involving a king and a prince searching for the “White Queen,” a stand-in for the boy’s mother. After his father’s fixations turn violent, the boy is shuttled off to his mother and her new husband. Only as a young man does he begin asking questions about what led to his father’s actions. His search for answers leads to his paternal grandparents, then back to Copenhagen, where he begins working at a post office and, for the first time, goes by an assumed name, Mehmet Faruk. In Copenhagen, he achieves a modicum of happiness, finding both love and artistic recognition, but then the mysteries of his past resurface. The early, child’s-eye-view sections are filled with somewhat improbably precocious wisdom, but, on the whole, the book’s short, lively chapters create a resonant catalogue of life. (Mar.)