A mother and son move to a village in northern Norway, each ensconced in their own world. Their distance has fatal consequences.
With the publication of the novel CUT in 1994, Hanne rstavik
(b. 1969) embarked on a career that would make her one of the most
remarkable and admired authors in Norwegian contemporary
literature. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with
the publication of LOVE (Kj rlighet), which in 2006 was voted the
6th best Norwegian book of the last 25 years in a prestigious
contest in Dagbladet. Since then the author has written several
acclaimed and much discussed novels and received a host of literary
prizes.
About the Translator- Martin Aitken is the acclaimed
translator of numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including
works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter H eg, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and
Pia Juul, and his translations of short stories and poetry have
appeared in many literary journals and magazines. In 2012 he was
awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Nadia Christensen
Translation Prize.
Winner of the the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize
Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated
Literature
"A trim and electrifying novel . . . Ørstavik's mastery of
perspective and clean, crackling sentences prevent sentimentality
of sensationalism from trailing this story of a woman and her
accidentally untended child. Both of them long for love, but the
desire lines of the book are beautifully crooked. Jon wants his
mother, and to be let in out of the cold...the cold that seems a
character throughout this excellent novel of near misses." — Claire
Vaye Watkins in The New York Times Book Review
"Love is Ørstavik's strongest book." — Karl Ove Knausgaard
"[A] haunting masterpiece... The deceptively simple novel is
slow-burning, placing each character into situations associated
with horror—entering an unfamiliar house, accepting a ride from a
stranger—and the result is a magnificent tale." — Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
"Prizewinning Norwegian Ørstavik follows the parallel courses of a
single mother and her 8-year-old son during a night that moves
unrelentingly toward tragedy... A nightmarish sense of
impending doom hangs over these carefully detailed, tightly
controlled pages... icy cold to the core." — Kirkus
Reviews
"[A] creeping sense of unease is racheted up by the cool, lucid
prose and how the paragraphs shift between mother and son,
clarifying how close they should be and how close they aren’t...
Multi-award winner Ørstavik offers an unsettling read that most
will enjoy." — Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
"Ørstavik’s ingenious device is to toggle between their two
consciousnesses from one paragraph to the next, so that their
narratives run as though on parallel train tracks, never to meet,
even as they lie cheek to cheek. Layers of unremarkable everyday
intimacy and acres of emotional distance are compressed between the
lines ... Ørstavik has found fertile territory here in which
to dig into the raging solipsism of the inner life ... We are
all sealed worlds, Ørstavik seems to suggest; it’s dark outside,
and it’s dark inside too." — Guardian
"[An] edgy, elegiac and beautifully written novel. . . Over
the course of the evening, the two characters' narratives work
together to expose the vulnerability of their affections; they
mistake and misinterpret each other's intentions, just as they miss
each other driving by in separate cars on a lonesome road. What you
think will happen doesn't—and what does breaks your heart." —
Oprah.com
“[Q]uite simply, exceptional... If this book is an
indication of Orstavik's talent, then translations of the rest of
her work can't come soon enough... [LOVE] is a short,
suspenseful winter's tale crafted in beautifully spare and precise
prose. It can be read in a few hours but its singular effects haunt
the reader for a long time afterward.” — Malcolm Forbes, The
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Building up to a shattering culmination...that stays with the
reader long after closing the book, Love is as haunting as it is
moving, stunningly presented in Martin Aitken’s discerning
translation. Although originally published in Norway more than 20
years ago, the novel retains a timeless brilliance through its
portrayal of missed connections and failures to communicate beyond
surface levels." — 3:AM Magazine
“Love is a deep and vibrantly alive novel... beautifully
devastating... This is not your typical love story but rather the
sharp-edged account of a boy whose need for attention from his
heedless mother is heartfelt and full of yearning.” — World
Literature Today
"...driven home for American readers thanks, in large part, to the
translation, by Martin Aitkin. Aitkin’s translation is economic,
delicate, and pliant, making the narrative shifts between Vibeke
and Jon seem effortless, dreamlike." — Entropy
"Love is a beautiful novella of beguiling simplicity, and Martin
Aitken’s translation has brought it over into an English that is
both familiar and alien." — Erik Noonan, Asymptote
"[I]n Love, the closeness of the perspectives, the cramming of them
together, as if the mother and son are one person, and yet clearly
not, feels less about narrative, and more about the limitations of
love. We think we know another person, we feel settled in another
person, and yet, perhaps every other consciousness is entirely a
mystery. That’s the power of this particular book. The tiny
emotional and atmospheric shifts are often barely perceptible, and
yet they add up to much more." — Anita Felicelli, Los Angeles
Review of Books
"Ørstavik brings us remarkably close to both her characters,
shifting effortlessly between them in stark, lucid prose ...
Ørstavik’s twinned themes of love and neglect manifest on every
page. Her style, brilliantly translated by Martin Aitken, is quiet
and mesmeric, aligning us with divorcee Vibeke and, particularly,
with her son Jon, on the eve of his ninth birthday ... for all the
potential dangers of this one night, the book’s achievement is that
we come to the end of it seeing a wider picture." — Sarah
Gilmartin, Irish Times
"Ørstavik invites the readers into her two characters’ innermost
thoughts, seamlessly switching back and forth between their
perspectives— often within the same paragraph. Their stories unfold
breathlessly close together on the page.... a creeping sense of
tragedy brews within the story...Though Love is only one hundred
and twenty-five pages, its careful craft and beautiful details make
it worth savoring—right to its haunting but inevitable conclusion."
— Samantha Apaer, Zyzzyva
"[Love is] a remarkable novel that will linger long after." — SF
Gate
"[T]here is an inescapable and escalating sense of anxiety as the
story unfolds... In many ways Loveseems to be taking place
within a threshold, an in-between time, a twilight & dawnlight
moment that may or may not be completely real... [A] dreamlike
adventure... poised at the brink of a looming tragedy." — Michelle
Bailat-Jones, Necessary Fiction
"Hanne Ørstavik’s exquisite Love, so elemental in its materials and
technique, embodies a profound recognition – namely that every
search for clarity and connection must proceed through the full
awareness of what constrains us." — Ron Slate, On the Seawall
"Love’s Love.” — Fani Papageorgiou, Hyperallergic
"Ørstavik carefully blends the narratives so the words and actions
of one character reflect or bleed into the other. . . What could be
a simple family story is instead filled with foreboding and
anxiety, showcasing the marvels and dangers pulsating just below
the surface in our everyday lives. Longing and hopefulness fills
these brief pages, leaving readers with a sense of wonder for the
average: how a day can be so filled with newness and potential,
with menace and tragedy." — The Gazette (Iowa)
"Love is effectively atmospheric... neatly textured with
its back and forths... A disturbing little read, nicely,
darkly told." — Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
"In this swift, elegantly constructed novel, Hanne Ørstavik
masterfully conveys a sense of entwined dread and longing that
doesn’t let up for a second. From the opening page to the
powerfully moving finale, this tale of a mother and son is
riveting. The characters’ inner lives are illumined by a beautiful
eeriness, and the translation’s precision and clarity do justice to
the novel’s intensities. Read it: it’ll bat around your brain for a
long time afterward." — Martha Cooley, author of The
Archivist and Guesswork
“What was so striking to me about this slim novel was how quiet and
circumspect it was given the emotional gut punch it delivered.
‘Deceptive’ is right, sneaky even, and at the risk of falling into
the trap of stereotyping Norwegian lit, the power of quietly
mushrooming foreboding is strong with Ørstavik. As I
happen to be flying over the dark and snowy north of Norway as
I write this, looking out my window at the icy fjords below, I
feel the creep, even at 35,000 feet.” — M. Bartley Seigel,
Words Without Borders
"LOVE is hard, clear, merciless, and utterly compelling – a prism
of the many daily ways we miss each other." — Rebecca Dinerstein,
author of The Sunlit Night
"Point of view works like a spot of living light in this
slender book, with deft perspective shifts occurring between
Vibeke, a hardworking, distracted mother, and Jon, her curious,
lonely young son, on nearly every page. Mother and son are each on
a separate journey, but the reader watches their whole shared life,
as memories are folded expertly between breaths in Orstavik's
urgent, visually vivid present tense--what a lovely
shape. Nothing is wasted. And I'm astonished by the precision
and poetry of Martin Aitken's translation from the Norwegian." —
Gina Balibrera, Literati Bookstore
"You can give it as a gift to anyone, and they will be absorbed." —
Aftenposten
"Ørstavik describes these tense hours with a fine feeling for
language. The tone is quiet, the words believable, the story
captivating and engaging without turning into a tearjerker about
broken family ties." — Morgenbladet
"A wonderful and poetic book about loneliness and the search for
love.” — La Gazette Nord-Pas de Calais
"Simple and subtle, meditative and gripping." — L'Humanité
"Love explores the insurmountable distance between people, the
elementary impenetrability of them, and tells us about the
difficulty of reading the signals of others. In short, dry
sentences, Ørstavik relates all the postponed, the possibilities
that hang over our lives." — Avant-critiques
“A wonder of minimalist prose. . . Curious, and simultaneously
a joy, emerging out of such a literary, linguistic power.” —
Kristina Maidt-Zinke, Süddeutsche Zeitung
“Her style is shy, almost minimalistic; Drama plays out underneath
the surface. . . It is namely masterful. . . Perhaps Love, which
appeared in 1997, is even a kind of pioneer that contemporary
Norwegian literature has followed since then. Everything is inside:
loneliness, yearning, self-doubt – and the desperate, but unending
will to change something.” — Peter Urban-Halle, Neue Zürcher
Zeitung
“This book, this small story by Hanne Ørstavik, binds one, and when
one finishes reading it, doesn’t let one go so quickly.” — Cornelia
Wolter, Frankfurter Neue Presse + Frankfurter Rundschau
“…well-constructed, linguistically brilliant, and such a cruel book
that it leaves a cinematic shuddering in the mind.” — Martina
Sander, Besser Nord als Nie!
"Hanne Ørstavik's literary significance grows from novel to
novel... An existential novel dealing with both the heaviness and
lightness of language, written with impressive strength and
courage... Rarely does one come across such a perceptive analytical
mind as Hanne Ørstavik. She gives nothing away for free, there is
no overdriven emotion, no sentimentality nor pandering to her
public. The story's concept overrides everything, all the layers of
the onion are peeled away until we come to the heart of the
question. Hanne Ørstavik never makes it easy for herself or the
reader in her rigorous treatment of these existential problems. But
thanks to a language rich in its precision, with no loss of
simplicity, it becomes an experience to follow her to her
conclusion. One knows that one has read something substantial which
one would not wish to be without." — Dagbladet
"The novella takes place over a single night as Vibeke goes off on
her own to pursue a love interest and Jon wanders around his
neighborhood and meets unusual strangers who might possibly put him
in danger. As the night drags on, the cold and the dark
heighten the atmosphere of peril, and the characters struggle
against the loneliness that presses in on them." — Nghiem
Tran, Electric Literature
“Each sentence, seemingly straightforward in its simplicity, makes
its small contribution to a building sense of dread, the threat of
disaster. This snow globe of a novel—small, contained, twinkling
within its wintry night—ultimately speaks of vast emotional
distances and explores the consequences of where we choose to
direct our love.” — Marisa Grizenko, Plain Pleasures
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