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
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