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My first reading of Norwegian fiction in a very, very, very long time. It's a great collection of short stories, all orbiting around themes of death, love, grief/depression, fatherhood, social disconnect, and mourning, all with the leitmotif of the ambulance passing by, and anchored by this recurrent message: just hold on. Keep going. Don't give up.
The first half of the collection is a bit gruesome -- visceral and violent and painful -- but towards the latter half, it turns more bittersweet and contemplative. It ends on a nicer note to make up for the gut-churning unpleasantry of some of the earlier images (the opening paragraph of the very first story is particularly upsetting, holy cow). I adore visceral writing when it has a point, however, which Harstad definitely does; it's hard-hitting, and all of these stories center on just plain human connection.
A French translation (and Finnish, I think?) of this collection exists, but not English (yet...). I'll be looking into his novel, I think, since the internet tells me good things about it. And I want to read more things in Norwegian!
The first half of the collection is a bit gruesome -- visceral and violent and painful -- but towards the latter half, it turns more bittersweet and contemplative. It ends on a nicer note to make up for the gut-churning unpleasantry of some of the earlier images (the opening paragraph of the very first story is particularly upsetting, holy cow). I adore visceral writing when it has a point, however, which Harstad definitely does; it's hard-hitting, and all of these stories center on just plain human connection.
A French translation (and Finnish, I think?) of this collection exists, but not English (yet...). I'll be looking into his novel, I think, since the internet tells me good things about it. And I want to read more things in Norwegian!