Anatomy. Monotony.

Edy Poppy

Original Publication: 2005

Original Publication in English Translation: 2018

Original Publisher in English: Dalkey Archive Press

Although I’m filing this as a “Reading the Dalkey Archive” post, it’s actually about two books: by Norwegian author Edy Poppy, translated by May-Brit Akerholt, and by Norwegian author Nina Lykke, translated by B. L. Crook.

And no, I’m not putting these two books together simply because they’re both by female Norwegian authors; I’m putting them in conversation because they’re both about extramarital affairs, the quest for romantic freedom and satisfaction, and jealousy. The two novels explore two different approaches—an open marriage, a secret affair—to the dissatisfaction, or incompleteness, so often found in traditional relationships.

They also present two different types of monotony. In Poppy’s book, the repetitive nature of the couple’s open relationship—taking a lover, returning to one’s “primary” partner, cutting things off, starting again—becomes repetitive. Poppy states this much more eloquently in her conversation with Siri Hustvedt (read the whole conversation ):

I had sent them an early version of the novel, then called:��Speculations Ģ����ý What Once Was, But That I Can Now Only Remember. In return I got a big analysis of my work and a refusal. One criticism was regarding the marriage of my main protagonists, a Norwegian wannabe writer called Vår and her French husband and mentor Lou. It was that the couple’s constant love experimentation was resulting in an unexpected form of monotony. Of repetition. And even though it was meant negatively, I thought, well, that’s very interesting; I want to explore that more, not less! I understood many things about my writing through this rejection.

In Natural Causes, the monotony is of the narrator ��������’s life and marriage. She’s a general practitioner whose patients tend do the same things over and over again. (Sometimes dangerous, such as continuing to smoke and drink, never to diet. Other times not so dangerous, but just as annoying, such as the hypochondriac who never stops coming in hoping for a diagnosis.) And her relationship with her husband, who is obsessed only with participating in skiing competitions, is a total monotonous drag.

There’s an affinity between these two books, a shared urge between the two female protagonists to find the best way to keep going, to live a life that’s fulfilling in a way that feels deserved and right.

*

But let’s back up and take these one at a time.

Anatomy. Monotony. is the story of Vår who, like any good protagonist in a Dalkey book, is struggling to write a book about her relationship with her husband. She’s married to Lou, but early on in their marriage was encouraged by him to maintain an incredibly passionate, almost obsessive relationship with a painter. (He’s referred to as “The Painter” in the excerpts from the novel she’s writing, and referred to as “The Lover” in the “real life” sections of the novel. I’ll use “The Lover” from here on out.)

A thruple, in modern parlance, and one that works . . . sort of . . . for a time. Lou encourages her to pose for, be painted by, and make love to The Lover; and Vår is caught between the love and desire she has for her husband and the freedom he allows, and the near animalistic passion she experiences only with The Lover.

But then, jealousy. And things end with The Lover.

“The Lover and I . . . We could never get enough. It was on the border of cannibalism . . . I really loved him, I truly did, I almost sacrificed Lou. But then it turned out to be wrong after all. Because now it’s over. Now I feel something else, less painful, safer . . . Friendship.”

The Lover remains a constant in the background, throughout the rest of the novel, sometimes as the friend Vår wants to talk with late at night, the love she hasn’t really “gotten over” (one of the best lines in the book is “nostalgia doesn’t mean anything other than what used to be is over, and now you wish it could be again”), and as an experiment that maybe went too far—at least for Lou. Which is why he proposes a sort of game, a chance to do it all over again, to find a similar type of freedom, but that this time he’ll be able to handle himself, to deal with the jealousy, to do things right.

Of course, in the present time in the book, Lou has gotten quite involved with Sidney, a young girl who resembles Jane Birkin (R.I.P.), and with whom he takes lots of long walks, pines over, randomly spends nights with, so on and so forth. Which makes Vår jealous.

In her words: “Jealousy is something I have nothing but contempt for, but it still gnaws away inside me. I refuse to be broken.”

So Lou makes a proposal. With a sort of Nietzschean logic he tells Vår that if she falls in love with someone again, like she did with The Lover, he’ll leave Sidney for good.

Enter The American. A cello player (his cello being the “only woman I’ve never left, and who has never left me,” a line so cheesy that Lou’s mocking groan slightly vindicates him) who lives in Amsterdam, has written a composition called “The Sexual Life of Plants” (another groan) that he’s about to debut, and with whom Vår has an instant, intense connection.

I don’t want to recount this book beat for beat—and to be honest, I’m cherry-picking moments here to try and logically build a sordid situation, whereas the book itself is muddier in a delightful, emotional way with semi-erotic digressions and meditations, and lots of other details rounding out these characters and their love affairs—but I wanted to get to this point, because this is where the masculine jealousy really starts to kick in.

Jealousy is always bad. And masculine jealousy is toxic and frequently dangerous.

Edy Poppy

If what I’ve written so far has you at all interested, you really should read this book for yourself. If you’ve ever felt love for multiple people at once, regret a relationship from the past that went sour or ended, or simply entertained the possibility of a nontraditional arrangement (“I never dreamed of finding the man of my life. I wanted to be independent. Free. Feminist. Lou, on the other hand, always dreamed about finding the woman of his life, even if he didn’t dream that this woman would be me. He wanted to be dependent. Macho. But it didn’t turn out like that.”), this book will raise a lot of questions and bring to light a lot of complicated feelings.

There’s also a pervasive sense of male creep throughout this novel, which the book undermines without being didactic or strident. Occasionally Poppy will be direct and on point, like in this passage:

“I mean that you should go to Amsterdam, Vår, that you should see, smell, feel, and let yourself be ‘fertilized’ . . .” says Lou and mocks me with the American’s cliché. “That you should take a chance. And if it goes to hell, if it goes the way I want it to . . . then I’ll take you back.” [Emphasis mine.]

But oftentimes the creep is just lurking, there in the background, in the form of phone calls and questions, and a latent desire to control the narrative . . . which all leads to a surprise (in part because it is not physically violent) resolution.

*

By contrast with Vår, Elin in has always lived within the bounds of what’s deemed “acceptable.” From the way she deals with her patients (who all test the bounds of her patience in different ways, each expecting the world, a quick and easy solution, without consideration for anyone or anything else), to her cozy life with her husband in a totally pleasant suburban community.

It’s not that she’s “buttoned down,” rather that that’s just the way things are. You work hard, earn a decent salary, live a comfortable life, and enjoy (maybe too much) drinking wine.

And then, almost by accident, she messages her former boyfriend—the one before her husband, the one with jealousy issues—and her life swerves.

At the start of Lykke’s novel, a year has passed since Elin sent that initial message, and a lot has happened. Most notably, ��������’s been having an affair with Bjørn, and more notably, her husband just found out. And unlike Lou from Anatomy. Monotony., he’s not about to entertain the possibility of any sort of “open” relationship.

What follows are essentially two plotlines: one recounting the development of the affair with Bjørn, the joy and freedom and hope and peace it brings to ��������’s life, the other a micro-analysis of her day at the clinic and all the stresses and impossible requests the average person makes of doctors and science in today’s day and age.

These intersect and bounce off one another, and equally held my interest, but for the sake of this particular piece, the affair is the only one I really want to write about.

In this instance, the jealousy displayed isn’t necessarily as tinged with destructiveness—or at least that isn’t the primary focus when it comes to Aksel, ��������’s husband—instead it plays as a sort of selfish narcissism, an inability on her husband’s part to understand ��������’s needs and desires. (“Aksel might have wanted the same thing that I did, that we would get over this crisis and grow from it and keep the home fire and the hearth fire and the daily fire burning, but none of that helped as long as other parts of him did not agree. And since these other parts of him were the parts that determined the basic functions, he was unable to sleep as long as I was next to him in the bed.”) And that’s just as hurtful, and just as disappointing. Especially since Elin sees the vibrancy gained through her relationship with Bjørn as a potential ��Dz����پ�������for her relationship with her husband.

And yet, quite clearly, and with my full consciousness, I noticed how quickly the normal, ordinary version of myself was replaced by this being who must have been asleep inside of me, and who behaved contrary to all of the things I’d said and believed up to that point.

Early on I began thinking in this way: What if I can take this energy and joy which I’ve found, all of this secretiveness and excitement, everything that’s welling up inside me, and which makes me have less desire for drinking wine and watching TV and everything else that I used to chew and drink and swallow in order to soothe and calm myself—what if this could give me and Aksel a new life?

By applying a kind of controlled and intelligently designed alchemy, the illegal would become legal, the dirty would become pure, and the painful would transform into something edifying. The end would sanctify the means, and all of this goodness, this wonderfulness, the delectable, the forbidden, would be permitted to go on and on and on, for eternity.

Nina Lykke

I’m not going to use this (very small) platform to promote cheating on your spouse, or necessarily embracing an open relationship—which isn’t for everyone, and can be tricky even for those who are into it—but it’s not unusual to reach a certain age and, despite the quality of your relationships, feel like there might be something more. Not necessarily a Grand Love Affair, or a Passion for the Ages, but a connection that is invigorating. Life is simultaneously very short and very long, and confining a person’s ability to love and experience—especially the way men have traditionally restricted their wives—feels so small and petty and limited.

And although neither of these books offer any direct solution to this age-old issue, they both wrestle with the complexities and paradoxes of love and freedom in ways that will definitely resonate with a wide swathe of readers—male and female, jealous or supportive.

*

To return to Anatomy. Monotony. for one second, with that idea of complexity and paradox in mind, it’s worth thinking about the way in which Vår is writing what is essentially autofiction inside of Poppy’s novel that, well, reads like autofiction.

The book is dedicated to: “my husband, who has given me everything, even what I didn’t want. (He is now my ex-husband).”

And ends with the Fresán-esque disclaimer: “P.S.: Everything I’ve written is true apart from what I’ve invented.”

Finally, there’s this quote from Vår that’s right at the heart of desire’s contradictions: “I answer that to miss me is wrong. That to miss me is the same as wasting time. A lot. If he can’t forget me. I close my eyes and I suppose that deep down, that’s what I hope. That I’m unforgettable.”

How does one heal after the death of a loved one? How does define oneself again after tragedy? Author and anthropologist Long Litt Woon responds to this question in both a profound and light-hearted way in her memoir, The Way Through the Woods.

Translated into English from the Norwegian by Barbara J. Haveland, The Way Through the Woods (2019) is Long Litt Woon’s first novel. Born in Mongolia, Woon moved to Norway after meeting her late husband, Eiolf, at age eighteen, where she still lives today. By describing her newfound passion for mushroom hunting in Norway after Eiolf’s death with an informal tone, Woon recounts how her love of mushrooms was essential during her grieving process.

The story begins with Woon describing herself as both a newcomer to the world of loss, and to the world fungi. Her husband, Eiolf, has a sudden heart attack at work, leaving her to navigate her bereavement alone, striving to set off in a new direction while creating a new path for herself. Her first few steps on this journey take her to a beginner’s mushrooming course, for it had piqued her interest previously and the class was suggested to her by a friend. The time she spent alone in the woods searching for fungi allowed her to feel at one with nature and was vital to her grieving process. Woon describes this process with simple sentences, crafting a clear visual of her time searching for various types of fungi.

Woon’s fascination with mushrooms is contagious and her adoration of the diversity, misconceptions and uses of mushrooms is easy to follow. Despite the accurate illustrations of the fungi she mentions, her descriptions of her accounts finding the mushrooms are so intriguing that it feels nearly impossible to read the book without looking up photos of the many types of fungi she speaks of throughout the book. While Woon spends many pages explaining what she learned about fungi and mushrooming culture on her road to becoming a certified mushroom inspector in Norway, she also spends precious moments reflecting upon how she healed after the death of her husband.

Her flashbacks to time spent with Eiolf enlighten the reader to the connection she experiences between mushrooming and loss. Her sense of accomplishment that came with her new title of mushroom inspector contrasts with a sense of limbo and lack of definition of being married or widowed. As Woon grows closer to her mushrooming friends, she finally feels that a new chapter of her life is beginning. The tone remains light through her narrative on mushrooming, while some of her depictions of Eiolf have a more somber echo to them.

Many of the descriptions Woon gives of mushrooms also apply to love and grief, solidifying the work as a reflection on mourning, while giving the reader a glimpse into the mushrooming community both in Norway and internationally. Throughout the novel, Woon provides incredible insight into the world of fungi and the outdoors while also commenting on the difficulties and setbacks one may experience while healing after the death of a loved one. The combination of the two gives the mushrooms a profound purpose both to the author and to the narrative structure, putting the death of Eiolf into the context of a great, new adventure.

Although the book may not inspire you to dig out some garden gloves, grab a basket, and search your local park for mushrooms, it will likely spark a heightened interest in both human nature and the outdoors. Whether it is the death of a loved one, or the ending of a relationship, Woon likens the grief she feels to the losses we all will experience at one time or another, offering a kind hand in the darkness.

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The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm
Translated from Norwegian by Anna Paterson
228 pgs. | pb | 9781947793064 | $15.95

Review by David DeGusta

Nicolai Houm’s novel “The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland,” translated from the Norwegian by Anna Paterson, opens with the titular protagonist in seemingly dire straits. Jane has been abandoned in a tent in the freezing wilds of Norway, a storm rages, she is out of food, and, perhaps most chilling to the modern reader, her smartphone is dead. What follows is indeed a survival narrative, but not a wilderness one. Jane is trying, though at times not very hard, to find her way after a heartbreaking trauma, the specifics of which are at first hinted at and then, eventually, spelled out. The novel nods in the direction of thriller, but is more a study of tremendous grief. And yet, it’s not a sad book per se. The action is as brisk as the weather, the tone energetic. This is Nordic, but neither noir nor Knausgård.

Jane is an American writer of some accomplishment, a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, until in the wake of a trauma she gives up writing (believably) and her faculty position (less so) to seek her family origins in Norway, a country she’s never visited. She stays for a few days with a Norwegian family who may be distant relatives. The family members each have different reactions to Jane, along with their own idiosyncrasies, and Houm exploits the awkwardness of being a houseguest in a foreign culture to good effect without lapsing into sitcom clichés.

After her stay with her relatives comes to an abrupt end, Jane tags along on an expedition to study musk oxen with Ulf, a handsome Norwegian zoologist whose athletic physique seems to owe less to the gym and more to central casting. That said, the interactions between Ulf and Jane do take on a certain energy and mostly avoid the simplistic “me Ulf, you Jane” trope that might be expected here. Throughout, Jane ingests alcohol and pills in amounts that would impress even Wisconsin undergraduates, but their effects lean more toward dark comedy than tragedy.

Interspersed with the present action in Norway are scenes from Jane’s previous life, going back to childhood and including an extended look at her courtship and marriage. The non-linear arrangement of the novel echoes the way Jane’s life has fragmented in the wake of tragedy, and the eventual depiction of that tragedy is handled with restraint, but not avoidance.

Houm is well-positioned to understand Jane’s interaction with Norway and its citizens: while Norwegian himself, he spent a portion of his childhood in Wisconsin. He also seems to rise to the challenge of writing a convincing female protagonist, both in my own (male) opinion and that of several female reviewers. Per an interview with the author on the podcast “Absolutely Novel,” Jane’s character began as a male Norwegian, but Houm felt the need to put more distance between himself and his protagonist, presumably to be less constrained in the directions the novel might go.

Jane also moves between experiencing her life and viewing it at some distance, as if she were a character. While she no longer writes, she still sees the world through the lenses of her craft. Houm thankfully avoids both the snark and the self-seriousness that often accompanies the writer-as-protagonist, and instead uses the occasional bit of metafiction to develop Jane’s character and poke fun at writing, usually his own.

Houm has a sharp eye for observation and description, such as when he says of young rhythmic gymnasts, “some of these girls danced and turned with the bloodless precision of small steel devices covered in stretch lyrca.” And there is humor throughout, though generally understated: “She laces up her boots. They have Vibram soles and a layered construction that provides insulation but is also uniquely breathable. You can’t possibly die if you wear them.”

From the sentences alone, only the very closest of readers might suspect that this is a translation, which is to say that it seems to be a very good translation (I don’t read Norwegian). The prose is smooth, and sparing with its lyricism. For example, “Their daughter was long-limbed and innocent: she made Jane think of perfect, green apples in a new, transparent bag,” and “An electric radiator next to her bed gave off a faint smell of the past being burned.”

The conclusion of this relatively short novel (228 pages) perhaps tilts more toward bleakness than redemption. There are hints of forgiveness, both of self and others, but the book rightly seems unconcerned with a tidy ending. When we leave Jane, she is still engaging with the world, still moving, still thinking as both writer and protagonist, fighting to retain her agency in the face of nature’s merciless contingencies.

This is Houm’s third book, and the first to be translated into English. On present evidence, he is more accessible than many of the better-known Norwegian writers (e.g., Jon Fosse, Dag Solstad, Herbjørg Wassmo), and is perhaps, in broad terms, closer to Per Petterson in style. In one podcast interview, Houm said there were no current plans to translate his two previous books. So, unless readers are willing to go the full Lydia Davis and teach themselves Norwegian, this is it for the time being. One does hope for more.

David Richardson is a writer, editor, and teacher based in New York. Here’s the beginning of his review:

Linn Ullmann’s The Cold Song, her fifth novel, is built much like the house about which its story orbits: Mailund, a stately white mansion set in the Norwegian countryside a few hours drive from Oslo. The house, nestled into the forest and cloaked in mist, belongs to the past; it has been the summer home of the Brodal family for generations, and their annual descent has endowed it with the wonder and deep mythos of childhood and family identity. The structure comes to the reader as familiar—we know it from Nabokov’s childhood summers at Vyra in Speak, Memory, and from the Ramsay’s retreat in Virginia Woolf’s _To the Lighthouse_—and so the beams of Mailund are as laden with our memories as they are with that of Siri, Jenny Brodal’s daughter, now staying at the estate with her husband Jon and their children Alma and Liv.

Milla, the teenaged daughter of an adored Norwegian photographer, joins the Brodal family at Mailund for the summer as an au pair. Siri, busy with her restaurant and frustrated with her marriage, and Jon, desperate to write the final novel of his trilogy and to keep secret his adulterous entanglements, entrust Alma and Liv to Milla. She is adoring and enthusiastic, if a bit young and striving. The arrangement is quaint enough until Siri announces,

Something was wrong . . . It had to do with Milla. Or something else. But Milla definitely had something to do with it.

For the rest of the review, go here.

Milla, the teenaged daughter of an adored Norwegian photographer, joins the Brodal family at Mailund for the summer as an au pair. Siri, busy with her restaurant and frustrated with her marriage, and Jon, desperate to write the final novel of his trilogy and to keep secret his adulterous entanglements, entrust Alma and Liv to Milla. She is adoring and enthusiastic, if a bit young and striving. The arrangement is quaint enough until Siri announces,

Something was wrong . . . It had to do with Milla. Or something else. But Milla definitely had something to do with it.

With this equivocating shift, the house takes on a discomfiting air, and the reader begins to see the structure—both of the summer home and the book writ large—slightly askew. Mailund, unsettled, takes an uneasy disposition to the forest around it. What was familiar and comforting, so known, is rendered strange, even nefarious—it begins “to shine with an almost uncanny glow.” So too, Ullmann’s plot.

Milla is dead. In fact, we found her body on page one. By page two, we knew her killer. The facts had been cleared, the mystery solved, and the summer at Mailund, it seemed, was set to continue. We quickly understand, however, that these neat solutions only stage a more imperative, central problem. In finding a clear culprit for the violent death of Milla early in the novel, Ullmann subverts the traditional thriller structure, mirroring the uncanny rendering of Mailund, and foregrounds the The Cold Song’s primary mystery: what motivates the cruelties we inflict on each other? The upended organizing principles of the crime drama at the core of Ullmann’s story give us the structure through which to engage a more inscrutable accounting of the self.

The brutal and violent nature of Milla’s suffering puts in relief the more pervasive, malignant suffering that occurs within a familial and marital dynamic grounded in concealment and withholding. An investigation of the first prompts an investigation of the latter as Ullmann’s characters come to terms with Milla’s murder. These interrogations upset the emotional stasis just barely holding the Brodal family together. Their effects are most poignantly and heartbreakingly expressed by an exchange between Jon and Siri. Long sleeping in separate rooms, the husband and wife begin texting each other photos of banal objects, Siri from bed and Jon from the couch. Jon pleads, “Can I come and lie next to you? / I miss you. / I can tell you stories.” Reaching out through a weak and weakening cell signal, Jon is investigating what is left of his marriage to be saved. Alas, Siri has fallen asleep, and his pleas remain unanswered.

Ullmann’s deft and elegant pacing furthers her drive toward an emotional reckoning. Deploying the mechanisms of a whodunit, Ullmann details the marital and familial dysfunction of the Brodal clan as a crime might be plotted. She reveals and withholds, keeping her obscure object in tension throughout. This project is further facilitated by Ullmann’s attentive ministrations on the line. She is both economic and rhythmic, her prose tight but never unnatural as she narrates the interior lives of her characters. Here, Ullmann quietly displays her brooding mastery as Siri navigates her discovery of Jon’s infidelity:

And there was me thinking that we were the exception, that you were my one and only, and I was your one and only, and that the disaster that strikes everyone else, the most embarrassing of all thinkable disasters, the most humiliating and the most banal, the kind of disaster that we laugh about when it strikes others, would never strike us.

Siri confronts the hubris of love and the pain of relationships, cycling through and ultimately transcending cliché under Ullmann’s able hand. Jon’s adultery is the great crime of Siri’s life, more odious even than the cold-blooded murder of Milla. We are directed again from the external action of the novel to the tacit emotional crimes we commit against one another.

In Linn Ullmann’s The Cold Song, the language of love tires of us, and we tire, in turn, of love, bowing like the sinking rafters of Mailund’s great frame. How many petty crimes of deceit before we learn? The mystery, it seems, will continue to evade us.

If historical fiction is straightforward, convinced of its own solidity, that the historical side coheres without the cracks of fiction, particularly the fractured narratives of post-modernity, then there is nothing to trust, naïveté or deception are in play. Done carelessly, plain facts mixed with the overwriting of a historical person to create the whole of a plot- and character-focused novel, leaves a thin fiction, easily undone by any inaccuracies and its leap over what is not and cannot be known.

Early on, it’s clear that Steen takes historical setting as an opportunity, a route opened to explore aspects of a man and life that reoccur in other lives and histories, in scopes miniscule and sweeping. The tale and its setting are neither a backdrop to make the novel stand out from others with a contemporary setting, nor a straightforward recounting. That Steen is aware that presumption comes along with writing about men and women who lived their own lives can be felt in glimmers and glimpses. Snorre himself offers Steen a chance to admit the complications. Snorre wrote histories and sagas, full of his own embellishments, and facing his death, he “began to wonder what his last words on earth would be. The ones he’d put in the mouths of various characters in Heimskingla [the sagas of Norse kings written by Snorre] would raise expectations of his own valediction.” There are consequences to writing the consciousnesses of those who once lived, and Steen sees that, in the risk of moral failing in writing a presumptuous historical fiction, there is room for moral accomplishment in writing a careful one. In his afterword, he writes “it is more odious not to engage in the fate of an individual, concerning the right of man, than not to do so.”

The fate is not only that Snorre has already been murdered, but that it was ever bound to happen: “On that same morning, a day’s ride away, it was decided that Snorre should die on Saint Maurice’s eve. Nobody breathed a word of this to him.” At this point we don’t know who decided this, or why. It feels as if no specific person or group did, simply that the decision happened, and then men were compelled to the actions to complete it. Even Snorre is dimly aware that something in the spirit of the world around him has turned on him, cursing Torkild, his smith, as he abandons the property, then spending his last days side-eying the rest of his people, wondering who will betray him next. It plays out as a dull paranoia: a rich, powerful man afraid of the weak and poor he rules over—but of course it isn’t paranoia.

As much as his murder is fate, is the inevitability of death, it is also the crushing weight of time, of history. This weight falls most heavily on Snorre, but if he were the only one burdened, the novel would not be the moral meditation that it is. Steen uses the perspective of historical fiction to take any life to its historical end. He does this with individual men, like a priest and his followers, stopped on their way to deliver a message to Snorre: “The ship they look foundered on the rocks off the English coast. The papal envoys drowned before help arrived. Here ends the story of the three messengers Snorre never met.” He does it with animals, whole species: “It had never flown. A short time later it lay still in the yard. It died without knowing fear, just as the last great auk would six hundred years later.”

Time and history manifest through Snorre’s memories, too. He is an aging man, given to dwelling—on his personal, political, and writing life. Steen drops the daily narrative to wander to age-old deals, plots, betrayals, affairs, and broken relationships. It is a historical recounting of facts and scenarios, while also a lyrical movement that suggests Snorre’s actions and interactions led him to this murder, even those not logically related. He may not have deserved to be murdered, but his personality made it inevitable. If along the way he had been a different man, a less cruel man, he would have more than these five days. This man made his son, Órækja, little more than a weapon, a crude and wild one that he can hardly control. Snorre does not himself kill, does not even necessarily order his son to do so, just points him in the direction of complicated situations that violence could, at least temporarily, resolve. Órækja reminds him of his own responsibility in this violence, so he drives him away, refusing him the love he craves. It is this that prevents this warrior son from being at Snorre’s side when his enemies are at the gate.

As the murder draws nearer, Steen begins to slow time down, with more departures from the day at hand, and scenes of action slow to a crawl. Snorre begins to disappear, already fading from the world, the historical Snorre replacing the man. Steen leaves him to spend more time with the men coming to kill him, telling parts of their stories. We watch Órækja almost stumble onto the plot. We realize that the woman he loves does indeed love him back, even for all she understands him. That Snorre is a cruel man is clear to everyone but him, though he has an inkling. At one point, he meditates on a legend he “never tired of.” It tells of a whale who killed all the sons of a priest, who then tortured and killed the creature. Snorre doesn’t know why he likes the story, dismissing that it is because “good” wins, but that it is unrelenting and brutal is a likely reason.

If Snorre has a place where he steps away from this version of himself, it is in his writing. This is his place of comfort. It is his legacy not based on harming or controlling others, though in his reliance on it as a retreat, that selfishness bleeds in. Writing became something other than a comfort; it was his way of hiding from the world. Remembering the last time he saw his son Jon before he too was murdered, Snorre too proud, too scared to open himself, focused on his writing “as if nothing had been said.” His life as a writer exposes his fears, his vulnerability held together with stiff, cold pride. That he wrote the historical fiction of his time links him to Steen, becoming unspoken compassion for him. Snorre as Steen creates him as a type of complicated man, unable to see his own confusion who can be selfish in the face of a God he believes in: “He invoked God’s name. He asked for God’s help, and then roundly abused him.” Steen exposes Snorre’s faults not to condemn, but to humanize.

by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and published by Archipelago Books

This post is written by Trevor Berrett who blogs at where readers from around the world are discussing all of the books from this year’s longlist in Definitely the best place to share your thoughts on this year’s longlist.

With My Struggle: Book One, Karl Ove Knausgaard began a six-volume (3,600 page) novel/autobiography in an attempt to exhaust everything at the age of forty. He knew it had to be long. He also knew he’d have to write it fast. So, at a rate of 5 to 20 pages per day, Knausgaard wrote these books over the course of about five years, moving at a headlong pace that purposefully outran any ideas of censorship or style. What makes such a long and seemingly self-indulgent experimental book worth reading and why should it win the Best Translated Book Award? Well, despite the fact that Knausgaard wrote at a breakneck pace, or perhaps because of this, the book is beautiful and direct as it weaves together thoughts and surroundings from various times in Knausgaard’s first four decades, all with immediacy. We get a strong sense of his urgency and are taken away. Knausgaard is working out his struggle, he’s opened it up for us to see, and by bringing us up close he allows us to feel the heat and energy or to stare in silence.

In the United Kingdom, the book was published as A Death in the Family, and indeed throughout the book we delve into death again and again. But it is about more than death. It’s about this life, about relationships, about the passage of time, about trying to find some kind of meaning in it all, about trying to be happy when everything seems to be going well but you still feel sad.

It does this by going through seemingly ordinary days in great detail. Often, the details and memories are banal. But even the banality of it all fits and is necessary for the book to have the effect it does. We do not see that which we see all the time, Knausgaard suggests. And most of the time it is in the banal that our lives are played out. That’s where we work out our feelings. This is shown well in the last 200 pages, around 70 of which are spent cleaning a home in preparation for the wake of Knausgaard’s despised father. How do we work through all of these conflicted feelings (he wanted his dad to die, “so why all these tears?”)? The answer: in the hours in which we clean, letting the thoughts come and go as they will.

In the end, this is a tremendously powerful and personal work of art. Yes, it is long and at times even tedious. Some of the detail is excessive and could be taken out. But I wouldn’t want it that way. To remove anything might disturb the balance, might make remove it even just a fraction of an inch. This is raw, and the struggle is beautiful. The tedium is meaningful—it may hold the most meaning of all: “Why should you live in a world without feeling its weight? Were we just images?”

This is the fifth book of Petterson’s to be published in English translation, the most famous being Out Stealing Horses, which won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was named a Best Book of 2007 by the New York Times and many other publications.

Here’s the opening of Larissa’s review:

On an early morning in Oslo in 1970, Arvid Jansen shimmies up his high school flagpole and replaces his nation’s flag with that of the Viet Cong. Confronted by the headmaster in front of his classmates, Arvid takes the opportunity to expound on the evils of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam and Norway’s complicit foreign policy, all the time being observed from a far corner by his good friend Audun Sletten. “I guess it’s all very important,” Audun shrugs, “but I am up to my neck in my own troubles, and it almost makes me want to throw up.”

Frequent readers of Per Petterson have by now come to know Arvid Jansen rather well. In typical Petterson fashion, Arvid’s life has been examined in alternating atemporal versions set forth in In the Wake and, most recently, in the masterful I Curse the River of Time. Arvid is often the vehicle through which the author explores and recasts episodes of his own past—“[h]e’s not my alter ego, he’s my stunt man,” Petterson stated in a 2009 interview with The Guardian. Vulnerable, self-absorbed, and made miserable by hindsight, Arvid is an incredibly sympathetic character. If for no other reason than this, then, English readers should be delighted to now have access to one of Petterson’s early novels (first published in Norway in 1992): It’s Fine By Me.

To read the complete review, click here.

Frequent readers of Per Petterson have by now come to know Arvid Jansen rather well. In typical Petterson fashion, Arvid’s life has been examined in alternating atemporal versions set forth in In the Wake and, most recently, in the masterful I Curse the River of Time. Arvid is often the vehicle through which the author explores and recasts episodes of his own past—“[h]e’s not my alter ego, he’s my stunt man,” Petterson stated in a 2009 interview with The Guardian. Vulnerable, self-absorbed, and made miserable by hindsight, Arvid is an incredibly sympathetic character. If for no other reason than this, then, English readers should be delighted to now have access to one of Petterson’s early novels (first published in Norway in 1992): It’s Fine By Me.

Arvid is a prominent character in the novel, but it isn’t his story. Rather, it’s that of his troubled friend Audun, a young man who, with his “real problems”—a violent and drunken father who is, luckily, often absent; a beloved but drug-addicted younger brother, killed in a car accident; a lonely single mother struggling to support her children; and numbing jobs with long hours and little respect—is the actual embodiment of the working class hero that Arvid has so frequently wished to be. But as seen through Audun’s eyes, there’s nothing in the least romantic about his situation in life.

“It’s fine by me,” (reminiscent of Elliot Gould’s own cynical chorus of “It’s okay with me,” in Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye) is Auden’s go-to retort, forced in its apathy when pretty much everything that he remarks on is anything but. In fact, Audun cares a great deal about what happens around him—cares about his sister who he thinks may be in an abusive relationship, cares about a neighbor whose brother is getting into drugs, cares about Arvid and his family, cares about doing well in school, and literature, and Jimi Hendrix, and woodsy hideouts where he felt safe as a child. But isolating himself and not caring—or at least giving the appearance of not caring—is far easier and exposes him less.

Although there actually is quite a lot in the way of plot happenings, It’s Fine By Me is a rather familiar, somewhat anticlimactic coming-of-age narrative where the ‘what’ matters far less than the ‘how.’ This is by no means Petterson’s strongest novel, nor should it really be expected to be—it was, after all, one of his first. But although the flashbacks and overlapping memories fold together less seamlessly than in other Petterson novels, although the emotional pitch is generally less subtle (lots of capital letter exclamations when people are angry), and the visual metaphors more overdetermined (a beautiful runaway horse, turning just before it knocks over young Audun and Arvid), the novel is still compelling, and sometimes even quite funny. (A scene in which Audun and Arvid have to figure out how to put gas in Arvid’s father’s car is particularly delightful.) Petterson’s characterizations are always both sharp and empathetic, his prose measured, poetic, and visual. One feels connected to Audun—truly concerned for him—and yet, due entirely to Petterson’s writerly sleights of hand, the reader can distinguish between what has become entirely compressed and unified in Auden’s mind: run-of-the-mill teenage angst and real, emotional (and physical) trauma.

Through it all, Petterson allows for a quiet hopefulness, the possibility a better future for Audun. There is resonance in the clichéd assurances of a sympathetic neighbor: “You’re not eighteen all your life,” he tells Audun. “That may not be much of a consolation, but take a hint from someone who’s outside looking in: you’ll get through this.”