Review: "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal" by Dorthe Nors

One of the deceptively simple yet most brilliant touches in Danish writer Dorthe Nors debut novel in English is that Sonja, the book’s neurotic main character, is a translator of those bloody and convoluted Nordic Noir books that have captured the world’s imagination. It’s wonderful device that contrasts with the book’s banality, but on a deeper level it works as a reflection that most anyone can relate to. This seemingly simple book treats the everyday things we have to overcome with a gravity that is instantly recognizable to us: the struggle to get from hour one 1 to 24, to improve our lives in the most basic of terms, and, of course, the way things cannot go our way and the healthy and unhealthy ways we deal with the anxiety created by such circumstances. And Nors does this quite effectively with her use of flashbacks that blend in seamlessly with the fraught present (one reviewer called Nors the “queen of conjunctions”). It is a device that takes a short while to get used to and some readers may lose track of what is tangible and what is a memory and forced to read and reread, but Nors natural, dry sense of humor and odd choices keeps the reader’s attention. As mentioned, the book focuses on Sonja, a middle aged woman who seems to be on the cusp of disappearing from the world. Despite her nice gig as a translator, she has very little to look forward to in her life. She recently got out of a relationship with a man named Paul on humiliating terms, she has shaky relationships with her friends and family and, as suggested by the title, she is having a real hard time trying to get her driver’s license due in part to a pair of instructors that make her uncomfortable and her hidden diagnosis of positional vertigo. Sonja goes about her days between classes getting massages from her friend Ellen, who senses her real life stresses through the knots in her body and her interactions with her other Molly, a married psychologist who has a weakness for charismatic, new age cult-like men. Her desire to get her driver’s license comes from a need to escape Copenhagen and move back to her home town of Balling, which is shown in those flashbacks mentioned earlier, where we learn about Sonja’s shaky relationship with her sister Kate, the stable one on the family with a husband and kids whom Sonja struggles to even contact throughout the book. There is no linear plot, although it is less episodic than I thought it would be near the beginning, with a failed camping trip with a group of Ellen’s female friends covering a handful of chapters. It is only near end of the book that I realized what it was building towards, demonstrated in a show stopping climax that moves from a rail car to a bench that portrays a glimpse into Sonja’s future where the optimism and pessimism are left ambiguous. This is a small book with a big heart about what it means to be truly free and the costs and benefits of such a way of living.   
Rating: One of the deceptively simple yet most brilliant touches in Danish writer Dorthe Nors debut novel in English is that Sonja, the book’s neurotic main character, is a translator of those bloody and convoluted Nordic Noir books that have captured the world’s imagination. It’s wonderful device that contrasts with the book’s banality, but on a deeper level it works as a reflection that most anyone can relate to. This seemingly simple book treats the everyday things we have to overcome with a gravity that is instantly recognizable to us: the struggle to get from hour one 1 to 24, to improve our lives in the most basic of terms, and, of course, the way things cannot go our way and the healthy and unhealthy ways we deal with the anxiety created by such circumstances. And Nors does this quite effectively with her use of flashbacks that blend in seamlessly with the fraught present (one reviewer called Nors the “queen of conjunctions”). It is a device that takes a short while to get used to and some readers may lose track of what is tangible and what is a memory and forced to read and reread, but Nors natural, dry sense of humor and odd choices keeps the reader’s attention. As mentioned, the book focuses on Sonja, a middle aged woman who seems to be on the cusp of disappearing from the world. Despite her nice gig as a translator, she has very little to look forward to in her life. She recently got out of a relationship with a man named Paul on humiliating terms, she has shaky relationships with her friends and family and, as suggested by the title, she is having a real hard time trying to get her driver’s license due in part to a pair of instructors that make her uncomfortable and her hidden diagnosis of positional vertigo. Sonja goes about her days between classes getting massages from her friend Ellen, who senses her real life stresses through the knots in her body and her interactions with her other Molly, a married psychologist who has a weakness for charismatic, new age cult-like men. Her desire to get her driver’s license comes from a need to escape Copenhagen and move back to her home town of Balling, which is shown in those flashbacks mentioned earlier, where we learn about Sonja’s shaky relationship with her sister Kate, the stable one on the family with a husband and kids whom Sonja struggles to even contact throughout the book. There is no linear plot, although it is less episodic than I thought it would be near the beginning, with a failed camping trip with a group of Ellen’s female friends covering a handful of chapters. It is only near end of the book that I realized what it was building towards, demonstrated in a show stopping climax that moves from a rail car to a bench that portrays a glimpse into Sonja’s future where the optimism and pessimism are left ambiguous. This is a small book with a big heart about what it means to be truly free and the costs and benefits of such a way of living.   
Rating: 5/5

Review: "Census" by Jesse Ball

There is a certain type of modern, usually American, writer that I do not really like, whose work is pared down, its beautiful elements plucked until the story is merely a skeleton of what it could be and the writer comes off less like a storyteller and more like a performance artist. I think of writers like Catherine Lacey, Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter who are guilty of this (mainly in their short fiction): a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of George Saunders and whatever their genre of choice is. But, after being mean, I can say that there can be merit in stories like these done the right way, and at the forefront of this aforementioned quality is American author Jesse Ball, whose most recent novel, Census, offers a menacing yet tender entry into this mumblecore genre of post modern fiction. Reminding me a lot of the work of Blake Butler, although not nearly as acidic, violent or nihilistic, this tale of the love between a father and son feels immediate, heartfelt and shot through with the pain of impending lose. It focuses on an unnamed widower who gets news that he is about to die. His main concern though is for his grown son who has Down’s syndrome and will be left alone in a cruel world once he is gone. The narrator decides to take a job for shadowy government agency to travel “up north” through towns denoted only by letter to give people a mark: a little symbol tattooed just below the ribs. What follows is a strange journey through these little towns and through the narrator’s memory.  We see what the two have to deal with in their mysterious quest, from those who offer bits of comfort to those who offer a healthy yet hurtful distrust. We also learn of the narrator’s life with his wife, a kind of performance artist/clown and whose full story is only revealed near the book’s heartfelt and emotional climax. This is a strange story, but a powerful one that makes me rethink some of my harsher literary opinions. 

Rating: 4/5

Review: "In Every Moment We Are Still Alive" by Tom Malmquist

In Every Moment We Are Still Alive, the debut novel from Swedish poet Tom Malmquist reads like a grief stricken fever dream, one where the worst thing happens to you, followed by the next worst thing and in the end it is up to you to make sense of it all. This is not a novel built on great dialogue or great characters (although they can be found within these pages) but one of great moods and set pieces. We remember scenes instead of the people within them, who are given names that are easily forgotten once they have made their presence known on the page, but the scenes are written with a furious passion that kind of stuck with me even if it never quite hits the emotional high notes you’d expect from its initial premise. I di not know if this is based on a true story, but I’d bet money that it is, because the narrator and the author shares the same first name. When the book opens up, Tom’s wife Karin’s checkup becomes a frantic battle between life and death, as it shows that she has cancer and the baby must be birthed prematurely. As the baby gets better, Karin’s health quickly declines and she eventually dies. It is a premise we have seen before, but how it drifts between the past and the present, eschewing big monumental life shifts for quiet moments that run the gamut from sweet to petty, the best of which involves the sad story Tom is turning into a book, really sets this book apart from others like it. Like I said before, the other characters even Tom’s dad who plays a big role in the book’s second half seem deliberately two-dimensional, hopefully another way Malmquist is showing the narrator’s (or his) fractured state of mind. This is an energized book that is written from a dark place, but never forgets about the blades of light that seep into our lives when we need them most. 

Rating: 4/5