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Jump to navigationJump to searchKarate Chop, and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space by Dorthe Nors (view source)
Revision as of 11:33, 16 November 2020
, 11:33, 16 November 2020no edit summary
This piece would get four stars from me, on its own, and the relevant words there are 'on its own', for it isn't. Some of my one-line sentences above aren't strictly true, for with the publication of ''Minna'' comes the opportunity to read an earlier collection of short stories by the same author, packaged upside-down and starting at the other end of the self-same volume. These date from the days of 2008, and while the author and her translator have been flooding the North American journal market with various samples of the contents since, we have the full thing for the first time. To me they weren't full enough however – they are so strongly designed to create an unsettling mood, provide unlikely and unexpected characters, and are all over so quickly (the longest is nine whole sides of the page) they seemed like scenes – effective scenes yes, but not fully resolved shorts.
They certainly bring out the moodiness of the Danish dark side, if there is one – here are disabled people accepting being conned, a woman facing at least emotional isolation and abuse in the marriage bed, the musings of a woman in the hairdresser's about how little she knows a neighbour, lads seeing their dads as imperfect for the first time, and people obsessing with female serial killers. One is even called 'She Frequented Cemeteries' which says it all. A couple of the pieces picked themselves off the page and presented themselves in a better light, but on the whole , they were about the premise and emotion more than the plot and the event. Three stars for these pieces – none of which bear anything like the inventive telling of the other half to the volume – meaning this as a whole is a fair-to-middling shop window for an evidently thoughtful and creative, if not utterly enjoyable, young author.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy. We also have a review of [[Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors]].
Prime in my world for short stories ever since I read it has been [[Revenge by Yoko Ogawa and Stephen Snyder (translator)]]. As a remedy to the Danish doom and gloom, might I suggest [[A Piece of Danish Happiness by Sharmi Albrechtsen]]? We had our doubts but you might also enjoy [[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)]].
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