A review by msand3
Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen

2.0

1.5 stars. About halfway through this dreadfully long novel (it’s only 187 short pages, but oh-so-long…) I was ready to declare Jacobsen a fantastic writer, but a poor novelist. As I inched through the last half of the novel, page-by-page over an entire month, I soon had to discard even that faint praise. His prose is purple. His dialogue is embarrassing. His plot structure skips, jumps, sputters, and slowly dies. It was rough for me to make it through to the end. I wanted so much to quit with 30 pages left...and then 15...and then 5. For a novel so focused on finding a balance between the romantic and the rational, fantasy and reality, Jacobsen fails to do just that in his prose. It is so overwrought that his otherwise powerful, gritty message becomes lost in the flowery mist of his language.