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I keep wondering if I had read this at a different time if I would have liked it more???🤔

Jon and his single mother, Vibeke, have just moved to a small, Norwegian town. The night before his 9th birthday, they both find themselves out of their house, on their own, in the cold on their own adventures. This book was short, there is no plot, but there was an eeriness to it that held me captive. Hanne did these unannounced jump cuts between mother and son from paragraph to paragraph that was jarring and effective. Also, it spoke about👇�

I don‘t even know what to say about this. It was beautifully written, if a pretty stark story. A quick read, the whole thing taking place over about a day. It definitely hit me in the feels.
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The mother in this story has an interesting relationship with reading which really resonated.

#booksandtea

A short book about a mother and son who pass each other through the course of wandering about town on a single night. The son thinks often about his mother, who has other things on her mind. There is also a foreboding sense of danger throughout the story that is subtly created by the author. This is on the NBA shortlist for translated fiction. 3.5��

Part 3/3

The third beautiful book I fell in love with in Foyles while waiting for a train. I adore Scandinavian fiction like this, AND it‘s gorgeous, AND it‘s a slow meditation on love and family in the cold. I hope I manage to track these books down when I have more money.

Two viewpoints - a mother's and a son's. The book alternates viewpoints every paragraph or so. Neither is given any freedom, so as self-centered as the mother is, the structure rejects that.

Disliked the message. Society tells women we must always be self-sacrificing too much already.

Think the plot should have been extended a few more days.

Jon, an 8-year-old Norwegian boy, and his single mom Verbeke are feeling their way into new lives in a new town. Like ships passing in the night, they each wander out and meet new people one night. Why am I sitting on the edge of my seat? Where is this danger I sense? The echoes reverberating between their points of view skew the unease into a rich, ominous blur.

BookTube review: https://youtu.be/xPownS5MuQo

Written like a writer who is a reader...

Beautifully written. I loved how the narrative jumped between the characters in such a way that sometimes I was a few words in to a paragraph before I realized it had switched. Ørstavik really evoked the eerie loneliness of the far North where she is from and never dropped the thread of suspense. I give the Mom an "epic fail" in the parenting department. #archipelagobooks #ReadWide

Interesting how the narrative keeps switching between the internal dialogues of the two main characters, sometimes paragraph by paragraph. Not sure I've read that before. Wonder if this cover is a hint?

All we need is....

There is something hypnotic, powerful, vaguely Woolfian, about this prose. The book will be published on February 13th.

#QuoteOfTheDay