Reviews

This started out well - it's also weirdly pretty prescient, being about Oslo slowly coming back to life after the disastrous consequences of World War 2.

The writing is lovely, the detail intruiging, the characters rounded and real.

But it truly is the most plotless book I've read. Nothing happens. Which is fine for a couple hundred pages but at almost 500 it gets a bit boring.

thebooktrail88's review

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4.0

VISIT THE LOCATIONS IN THE NOVEL

What a unique read. Echoes of the city is many things – a tale of one city, a series of stories of those who live there and a snapshot of history and human emotion.

It also works extremely well as a guide book! There’s so many mentions of street names, city landmarks and statues to note moments in history etc that you could literally walk around the city with this book in your hand and discover much more than you normally would.

The characters who live at Kirkeveien are delightful characters to meet in a novel. It’s just after WW2 and we get to meet them gradually, all of them with fascinating stories and their hopes and dreams. It’s through their stories that we really start to explore and discover the real face of Oslo as the city moves from wartime into peacetime.

This is when the structure of the book really comes into its own. It’s uniquely set out with chapters on characters interspersed with notes and minutes from the Norwegian Red Cross. This is the organization which has played a major role in the city in helping developing it and mapping it out. Through the Red Cross, we see how the city has changed, is changing now and adapting to the changing times. Then when we meet the characters again, we see how the city and the people, the people and the city live side by side, and how the stories of one intertwine with those of the other.

This really is a unique and insightful read. A novel that’s hard to categorise as it carves out its own niche. First of a trilogy that I am very much looking forward to revisiting.

marite's review against another edition

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5.0

Denne har vært på leselista en stund. Vi snakker om en god, gammeldags roman man vil sette alt annet til side for. Stor leseropplevelse. Det er en dyp melankoli i denne fortellingen, alle personene har en veldig avstand til hverandre, her er det ikke mye nostalgi å spore, den tidlige etterkrigstiden er slett ikke lys og optimistisk. Christensen skaper et sterkt engasjement for personene sine, så her er det ikke annet å gjøre enn å gi seg i kast med de neste bøkene i kvartetten.