RaveBookforumOn the line level, there is a powerful effect produced by the recycling of entire sentences, not only within a single narrative but across her body of work. It never becomes monotonous, as recurrence is itself a theme ... Across Hjorth’s novels, characters utter a variation of the sentence \'It isn’t easy being human.\' It is most forceful when delivered by the father in Repetition, after he opens his daughter’s diary and finds a fabricated account of her losing her virginity ... Just as it is not easy to be a person, it is not easy to write convincing novels about abuse that do not moralize. Anglophone readers of Vigdis Hjorth have the privilege of reading not one but five works of fiction that manage this feat, with real fidelity to the tangled and arduous experience of leading an examined life.
