Love

December 1, 2017

In a tale of heightened domestic suspense, single mother Vibeke goes about her life, reflecting on the success of a business venture and daydreaming about a handsome engineer even as she heads to the library. Meanwhile, son Jon goes out to sell lottery tickets for his sports club, encountering a chatty neighbor and a girl who lends him mittens. Mother and son have just come to this remote Norwegian village, and as the narrative unfolds, they move in different trajectories, with Jon contemplating his mother while she has little thought of him; she's even forgotten that it's his birthday. It's peculiar that Jon is wandering around on a cold winter's night, inadequately dressed and increasingly worried about getting home, and the creeping sense of unease is racheted up by the cool, lucid prose and how the paragraphs shift between mother and son, clarifying how close they should be and how close they aren't. VERDICT Multi-award winner Orstavik (The Blue Room) offers an unsettling read that most will enjoy.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2017
Prizewinning Norwegian Orstavik (The Blue Room, 2014, etc.) follows the parallel courses of a single mother and her 8-year-old son during a night that moves unrelentingly toward tragedy.Vibeke and her son, Jon, have recently relocated to a small town in northern Norway. Vibeke's mind is on a brown-eyed engineer at her new job. Jon is hoping for a train set for his birthday the next day and looking forward to the cake he imagines his mother making. A thoughtful boy, he has a way of blinking that annoys her and is concerned about torture victims around the world. "Dearest Jon," his mother calls him at dinner, but to herself she thinks, "Can't you just go...find something to do, play or something?" She remembers a dream that began at a glamorous party where a man admired her but ended in the "stench of urine," in "a wasteground of asphalt and ice." While she showers, Jon goes out into the wintry night to sell raffle tickets for the local sports center. He makes a friend and, dozing at her house later, also dreams: he and his mother return to their previous home and find it vandalized, his father at the table eating all their food and telling "sad stories about his life." A nightmarish sense of impending doom hangs over these carefully detailed, tightly controlled pages. Vibeke, thinking her son asleep in his room, also goes out. She has forgotten all about his birthday and goes bar hopping with a traveling carnival worker she meets. Her story and Jon's are told breathlessly close together, without page breaks, almost overlapping. When Jon returns from town, the house is locked, the car gone. It is at this point after 11 p.m.. Not once has it occurred to Vibeke to put her child to bed or even say good night to him. (Though this is clearly essential to the plot, it perhaps strains credulity.) She must have needed something for his birthday cake, he tells himself, and accepts a ride from a stranger in order to stay warm. "Aren't boys your age supposed to be in bed by now?" the driver asks. But it isn't creepy locals who pose the greatest threat or torture victims Jon should be worrying about.A short, bleak, capably written book, ironically titled, icy cold to the core.

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Starred review from December 18, 2017
This haunting masterpiece by Ørstavik, first published in 1997, follows Vibeke, a young single mother, and her son, Jon, over the course of one cold night in the isolated town in northern Norway to which they have recently moved. It is the day before Jon’s ninth birthday, and the boy leaves his home to give his mother time to prepare for his celebration. As Jon wanders, Vibeke forgets about her son and steps out herself to visit the library. From here, the narrative splits to monitor both characters separately as they encounter townsfolk and drift through the hours. Vibeke stops at a traveling carnival, where she strikes up a conversation with one of the employees, while Jon makes friends with a girl from school and later realizes he’s locked out of his home. Ørstavik shifts from Vibeke to Jon with incredible dexterity, often jumping perspective from one paragraph to the next, and, as their seemingly mundane nights progress, a creeping sense of dread builds. The deceptively simple novel is slow-burning, placing each character into situations associated with horror—entering an unfamiliar house, accepting a ride from a stranger—and the result is a magnificent tale.