PositiveThe Rumpus...a fast read and a clever book ... Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore is a hyperactive and plot-driven book. In fact, it’s really a young adult novel for adults. And it works fairly well as one. There are many flaws, however. They include: character motivations that sometimes don’t make sense, stilted dialogue, and unnecessary interjections of interior monologue. There is also too much corporate shilling and Google-love for my taste ... In the end, in a novel buoyant to the point of giddiness, some answers come from unexpected places.
Dorthe Nors, trans. by Martin Aitken
PositiveThe RumpusThe majority of them are dark and good, and a few stories are exceptional. In the better ones the reader is inserted into the middle of the story and the tone is casual, as if we already know the broader details ... Nors is adroit at offering powerful summation at the precise moment with a single cutting phrase or an unexpected observation ... surprising, subtle, and potent ... A few seem incomplete or have a style and tone that is in discord with the rest of the collection. But overall these brief realistic stories, as translated by Martin Aitken, provide universal insight into an everyday, modern existence. Readers might view a few as being very close to slice-of-a-life sketches, and that might be a fair criticism, although I wouldn’t necessarily judge it as a negative.
