RaveThe Cardiff Review (UK)If there is a word that comes to mind while reading Hanne Ørstavik’s Love,, it is cold ... Over the course of the story, Ørstavik builds up a palpable sense of dread ... Ørstavik’s coup de maître is not just to follow the narratives of Vibeke and Jon one after the other. There are many books in which the author shifts the perspective from chapter to chapter, for instance. But Ørstavik changes perspective from paragraph to paragraph and, sometimes, within the same paragraph. On the page, there is therefore an intimacy that is not reflected in the events themselves. This approach renders the contrast between the two and their inner lives more stark. It also raises questions about the nature of love itself ... Ørstavik’s Norwegian is rendered deftly into English by Martin Aitken, who won the PEN Translation Prize for his work and also translated Karl Ove Knausgård’s six-cycle literary sensation, Min Kamp. (It’s perhaps worth noting that Karl Ove Knausgård is among Love’s many admirers.) This is in spite of the brevity of Ørstavik’s novel, which at first glance seems so mundane and yet is profound, thought-provoking and, in short, demands to be read again, and again, and again.
