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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
A hauntingly insightful new short story collection from the Man Booker International Prize shortlisted author This is a collection resplendent with longing. In these pages, people meet without actually connecting, travellers set off but never seem to find home. We encounter them on the fjords of Norway, in the bustle of Los Angeles, and among the lights of Copenhagen. Outsiders yearn to be on the inside, insiders are desperate to be free. A writer befriends an ex-lover's mother. An elderly man offers his body to aging women. A woman's childhood memories of wild swimming draw her back to the water. In prose that is both elegantly spare and saturated with emotion, Dorthe Nors shines a light into forgotten corners and conjures darkness where it's least expected. Her characteristic sharpness and sense of humour are ever-present, catching us when the melancholy threatens to come too close. Love, cruelty, friendship and loneliness are all here, in these stories that brim with life. Dorthe Nors was born in 1970 and studied literature at the University of Aarhus. She is one of the most original voices in contemporary Danish literature. Her short stories have appeared in numerous international periodicals including The Boston Review and Harpers, and she is the first Danish writer ever to have a story published in the New Yorker. Nors is the author of the novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, a novella Minna Needs Rehearsal Space and a collection of stories Karate Chop, also published by Pushkin Press. Karate Chop won the prestigious P. O. Enquist Literary Prize in 2014. She lives in rural Jutland, Denmark.
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praise for dorthe nors
“Nors’s reinvention of experimental fiction is marvellous”
Guardian
“Dorthe Nors is a writer of moments – quiet, raw portraits of existential meditation, at times dyspeptic, but never unsympathetic”
Paris Review
“There’s something about the deceptive simplicity of Dorthe Nors’s stories that floors me”
Red
“One of Denmark’s most inventive and acclaimed contemporary writers”
Bookanista
“Nors has found her own space away from Copenhagen’s literati… Her words whip along, each idea cascading into the next. It’s like having a window into someone else’s thoughts”
Independent
“Dorthe Nors knows how to capture the smallest moments and sculpt them into the unforgettable”
Oprah
“Nors manages to condense the essence of life”
Spectator
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You can always withdraw a little bit further
CONTENTS
IN A DEER STAND
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IT’S A QUESTION OF TIME. SOONER OR LATER, SOMEBODY will show up. Even dirt tracks like these can’t stay deserted forever. The farm he passed when he entered the area must be inhabited. The people who live there must go for walks sometimes. And the deer stand is probably the farmer’s, and it’s just a question of time before it starts raining. The vegetation on the ground is dry. Some twiggy bushes, some heather too. To the right, a thicket; to the left, the start of a tree plantation. The dirt road must go in there for a reason, so someone comes here now and then. Take him, for instance, he came this way. Just yesterday, even if it feels longer. The circumstances make it feel longer. It’s likely that his ankle’s broken, though it’s also possible that it’s just a sprain. The pain isn’t constant. There is some swelling. Now he sits here and he has no phone. She must be in pieces back home. He can imagine it. Walking around with his phone in her hand, out in the utility room. She’s standing there with it in her hand. She curses him for not taking it. He supposes the police will be involved soon. Maybe they already have been for some time now. It’s probably been on the local radio; that he’s forty-seven, that he drives a BMW, that he left home in a depressed state. He can’t bear the thought of them saying those last words. She just wasn’t supposed to win every battle. 12
Last night there was screeching in the forest. Some owls, foxes perhaps. Someone has seen wolves out here, and no doubt Lisette has come by the house. Lisette’s probably sitting on the couch with her wide eyes, eating it all up. He’s so tired. His clothes are damp, and last night he froze something terrible. There are black birds overhead, rooks he thinks, and she’s pacing around in the yard, restless. He painted the eaves last spring. It’s a nice house, but she wants to sell it now. He really likes the house, but now she wants something else. When she wants something else, there’s nothing he can do. As recently as the day before yesterday, he had an urge to call his brother, but he’s lost that battle. Lisette’s welcome to visit. Lisette often stands in their kitchen-dining area and calls up her network. Lisette’s got a big network, but mostly she hangs out with his. And in principle, he’s only got the kids left. It’s a long time since she took part in the gatherings on his side of the family. There’s something wrong with his parents, she says. Something wrong with his brother’s kids, his brother’s girlfriend, and especially his brother. She says that his brother sows discord. That’s because his brother once told him he ought to get divorced. And because he loses all battles, he went straight home and told her: “My brother thinks I should get divorced.” So this isn’t the first time he’s driven out to some forest. He’s done it a fair amount over the years. Sometimes to call up his folks on the sly, or his brother. He also calls them when he’s down washing the car.
He’s sitting in a deer stand, and something’s happened to the light. A mist is rising. It creeps toward him across the crowberry bushes. Which means that evening is closing in again. He wanted to be alone, so that’s what he is now. He stepped 13on a tussock wrong, in the strip between the wheel ruts, some seventy-five yards from the deer stand. First the pain, then off with the sock. Did he shout for someone? Well, he shouted a bit the first hour, then darkness began to descend and he set about reaching the deer stand.
He adds up the distances between towns. It must be about seventy-nine miles home. That’s how far he is from the utility room, where she’s standing and staring at his phone, though no doubt Lisette’s there. Lisette’s playing the role of comforter, co-conspirator, and slave, yes, Lisette’s her slave too, but a slave with privileges. While he heard something shrieking in the forest last night. Probably a fox, but wolves have been sighted here too. The hunters set up game cameras to get a glimpse of the animals they hope to shoot. Or else it’s farmers wanting photos of whatever’s eating their turnips, usually red deer, he supposes. Then one morning this wolf is standing there, staring straight into the camera. He’s seen it in the newspaper, but wolves can’t climb, and it’s just a question of time before she sits down next to the washing machine. Her hands cupped over her knees, and he hasn’t seen her cry in years. She didn’t cry when her mother died. Her face can clap shut over a feeling like the lid of a freezer over stick insects. He had some in eighth grade, in a terrarium, stick insects. They weren’t much fun, and then his biology teacher said that putting them in the freezer would kill them. He peered at the insects for a long time before he placed them in the freezer. They stood there rocking, looking stalklike. When he took the terrarium out the next day, they stood there stiff. They didn’t suffer, he supposed. Thinking back on them now, they looked like someone who’s achieved complete control over a stage illusion—and she’s been 14successful that way too. Maybe she doesn’t have feelings at all. She’s got lots of hobbies, but it isn’t clear that she has feelings. He has the distinct sense that Lisette’s standing in the kitchen area at this very moment. Lisette sits in the bedroom on the edge of the bed, she’s there for the kids’ graduation parties, she joins them on vacation, and for several years she drove their daughter to handball. Lisette’s got short legs and a driver’s license, and by now the police must have been brought in. It’s been more than a day since he drove off. In a depressed state of mind, though that’s not true. He just wanted the feeling of winning, and now he has a view of a landscape at dusk. His trousers are green from moss and something else, extending high up his legs. The boards he’s sitting on have been attacked by algae. If she saw this sort of algae on the patio, she’d have him fetch the poison. What hasn’t he done on that house? And now she wants to move into something smaller, though it’d be good to have an extra room. “An extra room?” he asked. “For Lisette,” she replied, and then he took the car and left his phone behind. His family’s grown used to his absence, and besides, he isn’t the same any more. Something has clapped shut over him. First she won all the battles, then he positioned himself squarely on her side. In that way, he stopped losing, and she tired of scrutinizing him. That was the logic, but now he’s sitting here. A mist has risen, the night will be cold, and a wolf has been sighted.
