This little book is full of various short stories. Some told in first person and others in third. Some stories lead the reader to serious discussions, such as depression or true happiness. Some seem to be pointless. Most are well-crafted fables.

I enjoyed this author’s varied writing style. Each of her stories are unique and told in a manner which provides the most impact in the least amount of words. Some stories were extremely short, as in a single scene. I wanted to know what came next, but then I realized it didn’t matter. The important part of the story was just that one scene the author wrote about.

This read was a new experience for me. I’ve been spoiled by typical books which have a definite beginning, middle, and end. This took me out of my comfort zone. I wasn’t sure I’d want to finish reading it, but the more I read, the more interesting it became. I am so happy this book found its way into my hands.
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I am frustrated, because I was blown away by Gunnhild Øyehaug's storytelling, Kari Dickson's translation and Heather Wild's reading, but the way the audiobook was formatted left much to be desired.

I can't easily tease out the difference in storytelling and translation here, but in particular appreciated the matter-of-fact narration style in all the stories, which I suspect is if not linguistically then culturally appropriate. It didn't pressure you into having an emotional reaction to a story but when you did have one it felt more genuine. I found the stories of "Knots" rich with symbolism, self-aware and painfully real. So many stories were full of people behaving exactly as I've seen myself and my friends behave, even though almost no character was at their best during the story. I was not initially sure I enjoyed these stories and I'm still not sure that's the word I'd use. However almost all of them made me uncomfortable. I kept asking myself "Why would she do that?" "Why does he want this?" "How can they be so unhappy?". Questions I found easy to ask about fictional characters but not often about the circumstances of my own life. That is why I am impressed by Øyehaug's work, and am going to check out any other English translations available.

On the downside, and this is stated better elsewhere, the weakest point was the audiobook formatting, which had no chapter titles and no pauses in between each chapter. This might have been less irritating in a novel, but when every story story packs a punch, I really needed a chance to breathe between them. I ended up pausing the book between most chapters to just sit and think, which was made difficult by the non-existent pauses.

In summary, I was strongly affected by these stories but found the audiobook formatting and to some extent the audiobook style interfering with my engagement with them. ( )

I was given an audio version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

There are three elements at play with the audio version of this book: the stories, the recording, and the narrator. Lyehaug’s stories are tightly written, each one a slice of life with the main character dealing with some type of problem. Venturing from the ordinary of a man dealing with agoraphobia while shopping at Ikea to the bizarre of a son tethered to his mother’s umbilical cord, these stories reminded me of Kunlyoshi Hitomi’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories – thought provoking short fiction which requires several readings to search for the true meaning. Five stars for storytelling.

Unfortunately, Lyehaug’s stories do not translate quite so well into the audio world. The nature of these stories demand the reader’s attention to the detail of the story, to savor the nuances of her well-chosen words. The tracks are identified only by a number. While this alone does not make it a bad recording, stories either ran together on the same track or were cut on two different tracks. This type of recording made impossible to return to any particular story to listen again. This problem could have been easily solved by each story having its own track. One star for recording.

Sometimes the intensity or flavor of a story can be lost in translation when moving from one language to another. Heather Wilds, the narrator for Knots, had a strong, clear voice ideal for narration. However, her delivery bordered on monotone with little inflection while reading. Additionally, there were no significant pauses from one story to the next to alert the reader when one story ended and another began. Three stars for narration.
Overall, three and ½ stars. ( )

Once again, I am the recipient of a new Scandinavian author, Gunnhild Øyehaug. According to the dust jacket, she is an award-winning poet, essayist, and novelist. Her first novel, Wait, Blank, was made into an acclaimed film. She has also worked as a co-editor of two literary journals. She lives in Bergen, where she teaches creative writing. Her collection of short stories, Knots, was first published in 2004. This “radical collection rangers from the surreal to the oddly mundane. It prods the discomfort of mental, sexual, and familial bonds.” For example, one story is of a mother who delivers a male child, but all attempts to cut the cord fail. The two live the remainder of their lives bound together. Then his mother’s ghost appears off and on to comfort him. Bizarre? Yep, but it is also oddly compelling
Story.

Some of the stories are brief—as little as 3 pages on a small format book. In “Grandma Is Sleeping,” Bragg writes, ‘She got both glaucoma and cataracts early on in life, but she always managed, continued to crochet runners with tiny patterns, weave tapestries of small birds in a tangle of branches, colorful tulips twisting out of the soil and around each other, to the delight of her seven children and her seven children’s spouses and her seven children’s nineteen children. But today it bothers her. Today she stands at the kitchen window and looks up at the mountains and wishes she could distinguish where the mountains finish and the sky begins” (57). She is expecting her family for a large dinner she has prepared. As the family arrives, she does not answer the door.

In a story of a single page, “The Deer at the Edge of the Forest,” Gunnhild writes, The seed stood at the edge of the forest and was miserable. He felt like there was no point in anything, like he might as well give up. I walk around here, day in and day ouy, the deer thought, and there’s no one who sees me. Am I invisible, or what? He didn’t think so. I walk around here and could change people’s lives if only they could see me, but no one sees me. Here I am, a hart, and no one cares. The whole point is that I am supposed to be difficult to see, I know that, I am supposed to roam around the forest and not be seen. But it is the very premise of my life that is now making me miserable. I want to be seen. So here I am at the edge of the forest. I am open to being seen, to being shot. If someone doesn’t see me soon, I am going to do something drastic, I mean it. Right now it feels like I’m trapped in deerness. Oh, I would love to change everything, be someone else, something completely different. Oh, imagine if I could be a roe deer, an elk” (88). Several of the longer stories—seven pages—are also appealing. My favorites are “It’s Snowing” and “Two by Two.” One short piece was a play with only the thoughts of a woman about her life.

I am not entirely sure why I am attracting all these Scandinavian stories and novels, but I am certainly glad to add these authors to my collection of world literature. Gunnhild Øyehaug’s collection of stories, Knots, are thought-provoking, and at times funny, serious, sad, and mysterious. Only a story or two might be uncomfortable, but teasing out of the imagery and description, offers quite a few thoughts on ordinary events, ordinary people, and that should get your mind whirring. 5 stars

--Jim, 1/15/18 ( )

I've noticed that my reading this past year has included a relatively large amount of short fiction (1 or 2 a month at least) and within that there has been a high incidence of short short fiction aka flash fiction. That genre is defined as fiction of less than 1,000 words which is about 3 to 4 pages in standard print format. Short fiction has been around ever since Aesop's Fables but it does seem to be more prevalent these days if my experience is any indication.

I haven't been looking for short short fiction in particular but I just seem to run across it by chance, whether it is the work of Dorthe Nors in "Karate Chop: Stories", Kirsty Logan in "The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive: Love Stories" or this present collection by Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug.

The Øyehaug came about as I collect fictional references to a favourite composer of mine, named Arvo Pärt, and maintain of list of them at Fictional Characters Who Love Arvo Pärt.

I mention this connection as it is likely the reason that I found the story "Blanchot Slips under a Bridge" which fixates around the Arvo Pärt album "Alina" to be memorable due to the extra association that I had to it. The only other story here that had the same effect was "Vitalie meets an Officer" which was about the meeting of the mother and father of Arthur Rimbaud, a poet whose life and career have intrigued me ever since I read an historical fiction of his life ("The Day on Fire" (1958) by James Ullman) at an impressionable age. The downside to short short fiction otherwise seems to be that it is not very memorable unless you have some particular association to it. What I am left with is the feeling of oddness about most of these stories without any specific memories of most of them.

The exceptions to this were the longer first story "Nice and Mild" (about a quirky trip to IKEA) and the much longer extended final story "Two by Two" (about a cheating husband and the wife that waits at home for him) where you spend enough time with the characters to grow some association to them. ( )