Love in 100BestWIT

Sep 12, 2018 Agnese rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: translation, fiction, ebook, wit

Set over one cold winter's night in Norway, Love by Hanne Ørstavik, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is a short and eerie story about a single mother, Vibeka, and her eight-year-old son, Jon, who, for reasons that never become entirely clear, have recently moved to a remote village in northern Norway.

The relationship between Vibeka and Jon is rather strange. They seem to be almost unaware of each other's comings and goings, and their day-to-day interactions are very limited. The n Set over one cold winter's night in Norway, Love by Hanne Ørstavik, translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is a short and eerie story about a single mother, Vibeka, and her eight-year-old son, Jon, who, for reasons that never become entirely clear, have recently moved to a remote village in northern Norway.

The relationship between Vibeka and Jon is rather strange. They seem to be almost unaware of each other's comings and goings, and their day-to-day interactions are very limited. The next day is Jon's ninth birthday, and it soon becomes clear that Vibeka, who is preoccupied with her own concerns such as making herself look good and finding a man, has forgotten all about it. While throughout the book Jon often returns in his thoughts to his mother, daydreaming about the surprises that she might have planned for his birthday, Vibeka appears to be completely self-absorbed and shows almost no interest in the whereabouts of her son. It feels as if they're both living it their own separate worlds and there is a palpable emotional distance between them.

She reaches out and smoothes her hand over his head.
   "Have you made any friends yet?"
   His hair is fine and soft.
   "Jon," she says. "Dearest Jon."
   She repeats the movement while studying her hand. Her nail polish is pale and sandy with just a hint of pink. She likes to be discreet at work. She remembers the new set that must still be in her bag, plum, or was it wine; a dark, sensual lipstick and nail polish the same shade. To go with a dark, brown-eyed man, she thinks with a little smile.

Beneath the seemingly mundane adventures of the central characters over the course of a single day there's a layer of danger that keeps you, the reader, constantly on the edge of your seat. Both Vibeka and Jon are lonely souls longing for affection who, instead of communicating with each other, seek a connection with complete strangers. We see them interact with other people in the village, some of whom evoke a strong sense of unease that is heightened by the bleak and cold atmosphere of the setting. In all of their encounters with strangers, both of them come off as somewhat naive and overly trusting and that made this seemingly simple story into a very suspenseful read, in which something tragic might happen at any moment.

Ørstavik manages to successfully manipulate the reader and maintain a constant sense of tension by revealing the story in brief, alternating paragraphs that shift back-and-forth between Vibeka and Jon at the most dramatic points in their narrative, which leave the reader anxious to find out what happens next.

This short, haunting novella, written in spare and beautiful prose, will stay with me for quite some time, and now I'm also intrigued to check out her novel The Blue Room that was published by Peirene Press about a complicated mother-daughter relationship. ...more

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Feb 14, 2020 Jill rated it liked it · review of another edition

I actually finished this yesterday but it’s taken me longer than usual to sort out how I feel about it. I was initially annoyed, to be honest, because the mom is recklessly irresponsible and I didn’t think I could relate to her in any way. Plus I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to take away from the story. But it got under my skin, so I read a lot of reviews here and elsewhere and I’ve come to terms with it, I think.

I still don’t quite have my thoughts together in a cohesive form. I do t I actually finished this yesterday but it’s taken me longer than usual to sort out how I feel about it. I was initially annoyed, to be honest, because the mom is recklessly irresponsible and I didn’t think I could relate to her in any way. Plus I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to take away from the story. But it got under my skin, so I read a lot of reviews here and elsewhere and I’ve come to terms with it, I think.

I still don’t quite have my thoughts together in a cohesive form. I do think this book has something to say about the anxiety inherent in being the child of a single mom, maybe especially a recently-single single mom (it’s suggested that the relationship which produced Jon was abusive in some way and only ended months ago), who is trying to balance her single-mom life with a much-desired, adult love life. And the difficulty of being a single mom, which means you sortof have to be all things to that child all the time, and how emotionally claustrophobic and overwhelming that can be. In that way I was able to relate to Vibeke, though I am still mostly horrified at the choices she makes.

There are two things about the book that I liked a lot. One is the narrative shifts. It’s all told in third person from the perspectives of the mom, Vibeke, and her young son, Jon. What’s unique is there’s not really any signaling when it changes, and it changes frequently. You might read two paragraphs from Vibeke’s point of view, then one from Jon’s, then three more of Vibeke’s, etc. I read this on kindle and there weren’t any blank lines between these shifts, and occasionally you don’t even realize the narrative has shifted until you’re halfway through a paragraph. So that took a little getting used to, but not in a bad way at all.

The second thing is the suspense. I could not put this down. I was turning pages and wincing because I just knew something really bad was about to happen on the next page. Both characters make some downright inexplicable decisions, and waiting for the seemingly unavoidable consequences to manifest themselves was brutal. For a book this short, I thought the author did a fantastic job of building a sense of doom. ...more

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Sep 17, 2018 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: literary-fiction, translated-fiction, 1990s, nbatl18

There is something hypnotic about Love by Hanne Ørstavik that has really stayed with me. Set over a cold night in Norway the novel follows Vibeke and Jon, a mother and son living in a small town. It is the night before Jon’s birthday and we follow them throughout the night. They may be a family but they are on separate journeys.

What really drew me to this book is the uneasy feeling I constantly had around these two different characters. They lived together but they felt separated. There was a te There is something hypnotic about Love by Hanne Ørstavik that has really stayed with me. Set over a cold night in Norway the novel follows Vibeke and Jon, a mother and son living in a small town. It is the night before Jon’s birthday and we follow them throughout the night. They may be a family but they are on separate journeys.

What really drew me to this book is the uneasy feeling I constantly had around these two different characters. They lived together but they felt separated. There was a tension in the air the entire time and I was never sure if I should trust any characters in the novel. This tension is what made Hanne Ørstavik’s Love a compelling read. The mother/son relationship is not what you expect and feels odd but that is what is driving the novel.

“The sound of the car. When he’s waiting he can never quite recall it. I’ve forgotten, he tells himself. But then it comes back to him, often in pauses between the waiting, after he’s stopped thinking about it. And then she comes, and he recognizes the sound in an instant; he hears it with his tummy, it’s my tummy that remembers the sound, not me, he thinks to himself. And no sooner has he heard the car than he sees it too, from the corner of the window, her blue car coming round the bend behind the banks of snow, and she turns in at the house and drives up the little slope to the front door.”

It is rare to read a novel where the mundane feels so thrilling. Love is a novel of the everyday life but written almost in a way a thriller would be written. The shifting narrative helps keep the two connected while the plot is showing the disconnection between the two. It really was a brilliant way to have two characters remain connected and disconnected at the same time.

The emotional tension Hanne Ørstavik created in Love is what makes this a standout read. Martin Aitken was able to provide a brilliant translation from the Norwegian and I can see myself dipping into this one again and again. I have not been able to stop thinking about this one and I feel like the way Ørstavik was able to manipulate the reader, but in a good way. It her ability to make the everyday feel eerie, mixed with her masterful storytelling. It is hard to keep that tension at the best of times but Love makes it look easy.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-rev... ...more

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