Crimson in Around the World in 80 Books

Dec 11, 2024 Fee rated it liked it

A lot of this book felt like it was being shouted at me over very loud music in a nightclub.

This is an exploration of the intertwined, predictably messy relationships of five queer friends who just want to have a good time while simultaneously undertaking the universal struggle to find and define themselves. The narrative is fast and unrelenting with much of it conveyed through text messages, hashtags, emails, and social media posts, making it feel like you're reading along with the events in r ...more

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Sep 03, 2019 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: europe, author-woman, genre-fiction, a-reviewed, genre-litfic, z-read-2019, theme-queer, transl-danish, author-indigenous, europe-greenland

A snappy, sharp, experimental short novel. Sometimes you feel like a cold sharp shower of a book, on the knife edge of narrative and linguistic inventiveness — and then this book is just right.

This novella has 5 chapters, each written in the voice and from the point of view of a different character. The same events are told and retold five times — a device that can be tedious but here it’s compelling, fresh and full of surprises. Just when you think you’ve got one character and their arc sussed A snappy, sharp, experimental short novel. Sometimes you feel like a cold sharp shower of a book, on the knife edge of narrative and linguistic inventiveness — and then this book is just right.

This novella has 5 chapters, each written in the voice and from the point of view of a different character. The same events are told and retold five times — a device that can be tedious but here it’s compelling, fresh and full of surprises. Just when you think you’ve got one character and their arc sussed out, the next pov comes along and throws it all out the window. The characters are full of problems and dark nights of the soul, alcohol-fuelled party addiction, flashes of love and lust, and nothing is resolved. Yet there’s a happy-for-now ending of sorts.

Different text types appear: interior monologue; first-person present tense; text messaging (depicted graphically on the page); interspersed b&w photographs by Jørgen Chemnitz; epistolary bits; diary bits; dialogue; google search results; lists; questionnaires. All held together in a tight focused net.

The language is sparse; it makes excellent formal use of repetition and hyperbolic metaphor. A flavour:

“From Greenland to Africa, from Africa to the moon, from the moon to Venus, from Venus to the sun, from the sun to infinity, and from infinity back to here. She’s more beautiful than this total distance.”

“You’re a Greenlander when you’re full of anger.
You’re a Greenlander when you’re a liar.
You’re a Greenlander when you’re full of yourself.
You’re a Greenlander when you’re stupid.
You’re a Greenlander when you’re evil.
You’re a Greenlander when you’re queer.
Our nation, you who are ancient: go to the mountain and never come back.
Stop being so fucking pompous.”

Oh yes: and it’s a very queer book and a book by a Greenlander set in Greenland. This and the cover were the reason I bought it. It’s not at all exoticising or othering; it’s 100% ownvoice. The endorsements at the start do fall into the essentialising trap. The Anglophone reviews: “reassuringly Nordic and noir” (New Internationalist); “the way of telling is as new as fresh snow” (Stylist), and my favourite: “transports us to a cold homeland where the blood runs hot” (Guardian). The Danish reviews included don’t evoke nordic stereotypes and talk more about the prose style but, of course, they too are filtered through a post-colonial lens. I would so much like to read a Greenlandic review, and indeed, to read this in the original (or the German translation at least) to appreciate the “use of English phrases” (Hufstadsblavet).

A book filtered through a language, filtered through a translation. Niviaq Korneliussen wrote it in Greenlandic (kalaallisut); she translated it into Danish (title: HOMO sapienne, 2014); Anna Halager translated it into English (Virago 2018). ...more

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May 18, 2021 Julie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a strange book with an unusual format. At times it felt like a collection of short store, at others it felt like a novella. It tells the stories of a group of friends and lovers searching for identity and acceptance in Nuuk, a town in Greenland. I read this for #ReadingEurope #Greenland and while I’m a bit unsure of it, I will definitely remember stick with me.

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Aug 14, 2019 Lisa of Hopewell marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I learned of this book here: https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/1... ...more

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Aug 16, 2023 marianne rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: ebooks

I wanted to like this book about a group of queer friends set in Nuuk, Greenland, but it seemed firmly planted in the surface level story of a weekend of partying and love dramas. It never delved into deeper themes, and there wasn’t much that was all that unique about the plot. Something may well have been lost in translation from the original Greenlandic.

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