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A review by herm333s
Knots: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug
4.0
I started out loving this anthology at the beginning. Stories about an anxiety attack at IKEA, an uncuttable umbilical cord that forever ties a mother and her child, and the witnessing of a child holding a stone and lunging into frozen water; from whom we learn of in an annotation.
By the middle part and subsequent stories, I kept feeling pulled apart between enjoyment and annoyance. In some occasions I felt the narrative to be either "lost in translation" or coming from such a personal, creative place within the author that it became an impediment to my possible appreciation.
Without a doubt though, I was fascinated by Øyehaug's writing style. Her use of run on sentences and omniscience gave the reading experience a similar style to stream of consciousness. As one of her reviewers points out, I believe she achieves this by a profound knowledge (or as the result of a deep appreciation) of consciousness. And this is precisely what made them so relatable for I had never before experienced such likeness to the transit of my thoughts as I did through multiple of her characters.
By the end of the book I encountered the "story": "The Object Assumes an Exalted Place in the Discourse". It was here that I settled on my feelings towards the book. It is ingenious and sweet and hectic and new, very human, very real. In "The Object Assumes...," I believe the author exposes here the thesis for her approach to creative writing and the reason for her narrative style.
There are knots everywhere. In human or alien relationships, in family, sex, in animals existential crisis. In my feelings there was tightness and looseness, in her writing was confusion and clarity. And in these stories fantasy, abstraction and reality are all interwoven.
"Sometimes when you read, it's like certain sentences strike home and knock you flat. It's as if they say everything you have tried to say, or tried to do, or everything you are. As a rule, what you are is one simmering endless longing."
By the middle part and subsequent stories, I kept feeling pulled apart between enjoyment and annoyance. In some occasions I felt the narrative to be either "lost in translation" or coming from such a personal, creative place within the author that it became an impediment to my possible appreciation.
Without a doubt though, I was fascinated by Øyehaug's writing style. Her use of run on sentences and omniscience gave the reading experience a similar style to stream of consciousness. As one of her reviewers points out, I believe she achieves this by a profound knowledge (or as the result of a deep appreciation) of consciousness. And this is precisely what made them so relatable for I had never before experienced such likeness to the transit of my thoughts as I did through multiple of her characters.
By the end of the book I encountered the "story": "The Object Assumes an Exalted Place in the Discourse". It was here that I settled on my feelings towards the book. It is ingenious and sweet and hectic and new, very human, very real. In "The Object Assumes...," I believe the author exposes here the thesis for her approach to creative writing and the reason for her narrative style.
There are knots everywhere. In human or alien relationships, in family, sex, in animals existential crisis. In my feelings there was tightness and looseness, in her writing was confusion and clarity. And in these stories fantasy, abstraction and reality are all interwoven.
"Sometimes when you read, it's like certain sentences strike home and knock you flat. It's as if they say everything you have tried to say, or tried to do, or everything you are. As a rule, what you are is one simmering endless longing."