Read 230 of 2021. Everything Like Before: Stories by Kjell Askildsen. Translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella

Title: Everything Like Before: Stories Author: Kjell Askildsen
Translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella
Publisher: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 978-1939810946
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 318
Source: The Boxwalla
Rating: 5/5

This was my introduction to Askildsen. To the subtlety of language, situations, and to how people react. Askildsen’s short stories are seemingly calm but there’s so much going on under the safe. The characters are forever in a limbo, left to their own device, with nothing or no one in sight.

Whether it is tales of marital unhappiness, conflicts between parent and child, or the struggles of the elderly, Askildsen’s stories are all about everyday despair and life as it goes on. His spaces are ordinary – the kitchen, the park, the drawing room, a movie theatre, restaurants, and bars – where relationships begin, end, or are simply compromised on.

Nothing of significance is happening, even to the characters it doesn’t seem that way. There is however an understated longing for what is not known, love for what is not around, and solitude that is not needed.

Askildsen’s writing is simple and plain. These stories are more vignettes. They don’t run into pages and yet say so much. They also range from morose and bleak to the comic. For instance, the funny side of a son visiting his father to understand their relationship better or the title story that is of a marriage – real, tragic, and funny. The stories are a treat, to be savoured slowly. The translation by Seán Kinsella leaves so much to the imagination, I guess just how the author intends it to be. Everything Like Before is a fantastic collection of thirty dozen stories that range across the spectrum of emotions and make you want more of them.

The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse. Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls.

Title: The Other Name: Septology I-II
Author: Jon Fosse
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
ISBN: 978-1910695913
Genre: Literary Fiction, Translations
Pages: 340
Rating: 5/5

This time the International Booker 2020 longlist has outdone itself. With almost every book I have read so far from the list (barring two), I have enjoyed the rest. Some more. Some less. Enjoyed nonetheless. One such book is this one. The Other Name: Septology I-II is a strange read (like most that I have read this month). It is so much more than what it appears to be. It is not easy to comprehend but please do not let that deter you from reading this lovely novel about an artist, Asle, struggling with his faith. On the other hand, it is also about another artist named Asle, living not very far, almost sharing the same life.

I love experimental literature. I love literature that pushes the boundaries of my limited intelligence and makes me speculate, think, and challenge what I read. The Other Name managed to do that and more. There are no breaks in sentences. You do not know if one character is speaking or someone else is. And despite all of this, The Other Name makes for great reading.

The concept of a doppelgänger has always fascinated me. This book with its many layers, and the intellectual puzzle it presents to readers is complex no doubt, but there is a layer of simplicity to that as well. The Other Name speaks of so many things – faith, love, loneliness, identity, memory, and above all what art is all about. I think these are the major themes in a sense of this year’s International Booker long-list. I am not complaining at all. Such themes work the best for me as a reader.

Fosse doesn’t try too hard to connect with the reader. The prose is there. It is almost a take it or leave it kind of situation. There is a lack of plot in a sense that the semblance of a plot meanders and continues to right till the end of the book, but even then the book leaves you in a trance every time you read portions from it.