Hanne Ørstavik

Ich Bin Norwegian

Translated from Norwegian by Madeleine Dauer
Read by Madeleine Dauer
Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins

“I stared into the darkness outside the car. So dense it was when there were no reflections of the electric lighting the sky. No stars, no moon. Seen from the moon-glow from my rented German room the sky never got dark at all. Sometimes when sitting up all night I’d go out on the balcony that ran along the front of the building. I’d stand there and listen to the wind in the trees.”

I never really knew where I was in this book, and I don’t mean page number. Being alive in 2024 I am quite aware of time and place shifts in a piece of film or fiction. I like to think it’s part of our expanding creativity, but secretly suspect (and occasionally hope) it’s a literary fad.

Liv, the pastor lives in a small fishing village in far north Norway where she has relocated after losing her best friend Kristiane’s untimely death in Berlin. There, in Norway Liv faces and has ro deal with the trials and tribulations of her congregation.

That’s the plot, though it’s made more complicated by the reader never being quite sure of where she is. Within the course of one short paragraph we may be in Berlin or in Norway. Of course it’s fairly easy to work out, there being no fjords in Berlin, and we usually can see if they are around as Liv is prone to look out windows. But I’m being mean.

The Pastor is actually a fine novel. It’s beautifully written and the Nordic landscape is so delicately described with nuance. I felt that I was in a movie or poem, never a travelog. And though there’s little in the way of suspense, I was compelled to keep reading; in the end not bothering if I was in Berlin or a fishing village. Both places have teenagers with piercings and pastel-colored hair. Early on I thought the facial piercings were a clue as to location, but it seems, like time and place shifts, and so much else in this brave new world, that these too have become global.

I really enjoyed this book.… (más)

This book was a tough one for me. A young woman goes to a remote part of Norway to be an assistant Pastor. It's clear she has ended up there in part to try to escape her demons. A friend/love of hers has committed suicide and she is haunted by it and grieving. But while she is in her new location, she finds people with just as many troubles.

I was so emotionally wrecked by this book that I had to skim parts of it. I suppose that says something positive about the quality of the writing, but I found the story claustrophobic and unrelentingly sad. It was just too much for me.… (más)

This is a slim, 120 page novella about a young divorced mother and her young son who have recently moved to a new town. It's the night before the boy's 9th birthday and they spend the evening into late night apart, out in the town. The mother, Vibeke, has gone out to the library and then meets an attractive man who she stays out with until late at night. Meanwhile the son, Jon has also gone out and has interactions of his own. It's clear that things are moving towards a dramatic conclusion, but I was hopeful that the conclusion would not be sad. I won't say if I was right or not.

The writing style is really interesting. The prose is sparse and to the point and the book shifts between the mother and the son's POV with no warning - no page breaks or anything. So you have to use context sometimes to realize you've shifted to being with a different character.

I really liked this. I have another of Orstavik's books on my shelf, and I'm looking forward to reading it.… (más)

Johanne wakes up to find herself locked in her bedroom, in the tiny Oslo flat which she shares with her mother Unni. She soon realizes that Unni must have wanted to stop her from going to the US with her new (first?) boyfriend, Ivar, whom she met at the canteen of the college where she studies psychology.

Over the course of the book, Johanne tells us something about her world. She doesn't tell us everything, though, and we cannot really trust what she does let us know. In fact, it doesn't take long for us to notice that although she leads a more-or-less normal life, Johanne has her psychological hang-ups and disturbing mood swings. In particular, happy-clappy spiritual visions tend to alternate with shocking, violent thoughts. These issues might be a result of the oppressive presence of Unni who, in turn, appears to have problems with her own mother. In this novella it seems that, to paraphrase Larkin, "woman hands on misery to woman".

Ørstavik’s work had been translated into eighteen languages but this was her first work to be translated into English (by Deborah Dawkin), thanks to the innovative Peirene Press. It is a brilliant, clever psychological/character study but not necessarily an "entertaining" book in the usual sense of the word. I confess I found it a challenging, occasionally painful read.… (más)