Love

`Love is Hanne Orstavik's strongest book.' Karl Ove Knausgaard ----'An achingly sad, unsentimental story . . . For a short novel that spans only a few hours in time . . . Orstavik brings us remarkably close to both her characters, shifting effortlessly between them in stark, lucid prose.' Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times----`[I]n Love, the closeness of the perspectives, the cramming of them together, as if the mother and son are one person, and yet clearly not, feels less about narrative, and more about the limitations of love. We think we know another person, we feel settled in another person, and yet, perhaps every other consciousness is entirely a mystery. That's the power of this particular book. The tiny emotional and atmospheric shifts are often barely perceptible, and yet they add up to much more.' Anita Felicelli, Los Angeles Review of Books ----`Orstavik's mastery of perspective and clean, crackling sentences prevent sentimentality or sensationalism from trailing this story of a woman and her accidentally untended child. Both of them long for love, but the desire lines of the book are beautifully crooked. Jon wants his mother, and to be let in out of the cold...the cold that seems a character throughout this excellent novel of near misses.' Claire Vaye Watkins, New York Times----`[A] haunting masterpiece... 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.' Publishers Weekly, starred review ----`Prizewinning Norwegian Orstavik follows the parallel courses of a single mother and her 8-year-old son during a night that moves unrelentingly toward tragedy... A nightmarish sense of impending doom hangs over these carefully detailed, tightly controlled pages... icy cold to the core.' Kirkus Reviews ----`[A] 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... Multi-award winner Orstavik offers an unsettling read that most will enjoy.' Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal ----`Love can change everything. And it does in this edgy, elegiac and beautifully written novel...What you think will happen doesn't-and what does breaks your heart.' Kerri Arsenault, Oprah.com ----`What was so striking to me about this slim novel was how quiet and circumspect it was given the emotional gut punch it delivered. `Deceptive' is right, sneaky even, and at the risk of falling into the trap of stereotyping Norwegian lit, the power of quietly mushrooming foreboding is strong with Orstavik. As I happen to be flying over the dark and snowy north of Norway as I write this, looking out my window at the icy fjords below, I feel the creep, even at 35,000 feet.' M. Bartley Seigel, Words Without Borders ---- `Love is a beautiful novella of beguiling simplicity, and Martin Aitken's translation has brought it over into an English that is both familiar and alien.' Erik Noonan, Asymptote Journal -----`Love is a deep and vibrantly alive novel... beautifully devastating... This is not your typical love story but rather the sharp-edged account of a boy whose need for attention from his heedless mother is heartfelt and full of yearning.' Lori Feathers, World Literature Today ----`Love is effectively atmospheric... neatly textured with its back and forths... A disturbing little read, nicely, darkly told.'Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review ----`In Hanne Orstavik's Love , the equilibrium between a tense, disquieting plot and a gently experimental binary structure sustain the reader's attention and awe from beginning to end. The aerial beauty of Martin Aitken's translation contributes to make the novel a successful rarity: a book that is at the same time a thriller and a dens

Hanne Orstavik published the novel Cut (Hakk) in 1994 and embarked on a career that would make her one of the most remarkable and admired authors in Norwegian contemporary literature. Her literary breakthrough came three years later with the publication of Love (Kjaerlighet), which in 2006 was voted the sixth best Norwegian book of the last twenty-five years in a prestigious contest in Dagbladet. Since then, the author has written several acclaimed and much discussed novels and received a host of literary prizes. Martin Aitken is the translator of numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter Hoeg, Ida Jessen and Kim Leine, and his translations of short stories and poetry have appeared in many literary journals and magazines. He was a finalist at the U.S. National Book Awards 2018 and received the PEN America Translation Prize 2019 for his translation of Love.