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.
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
“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
“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
“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
“Butler pulls it off beautifully with a heart-rending story of small steps and big hopes.” — Bill Bushnell, Central Maine Morning Sentinel
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, 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 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 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 Remedy for Love
“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, author of With or Without You