(#gifted @pushkin_press) My first foray into Danish fiction and a successful one at that! Dorthe Nors’s collection of short stories was right up my alley: quiet, unassuming stories that are fully fleshed out in so few pages, with just a hint of unease running through them.
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The longest of the stories in this collection tops out at 10 pages, so that should tell you that Nors takes the ‘short’ in short stories seriously. And yet so many of the 14 stories in this book felt more developed than some novels I’ve read! I don’t know how she does it, but within the first paragraph of each story I felt fully immersed in whichever character’s lives we were briefly stopping over in.
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Nors manages to fit so much detail, so much nuance, so much backstory into so few pages that it almost felt like a magic trick. How can I feel like I know a writer suffering from writer’s block, or a young woman stung by a hurtful remark from her ex, or a woman caring for her dying friend, in seven pages? These stories suck you right in only to spit you back out just a few pages later, feeling like you’ve lived a tiny sliver of someone’s life.
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I did connect more with the stories in the first half of the collection, but there were some gems in the second half too. And I can’t praise Misha Hoekstra’s translation enough! Apparently Nors is known for her sparse yet emotional prose in Denmark and I feel like that was perfectly rendered in the English.
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Highly recommend if you like your short stories on the slower side. There are no fireworks or twists and turns; just everyday life, a touch of everyday darkness, portrayed so meticulously you feel like you’re truly there.