RaveThe New York Times Book Review\" ... the novel is an ode to the clumsier physicality of companionship, where bonds of friendship and love strain against the entropic forces of distance, irritation and habituation. Sentimentality turns swiftly to humor, intimacies wax and wane, and major life transformations turn on small moments like the brief meeting of gazes between a woman dangling from a rope during her first attempt at mountaineering and the stranger on the ground below who will make her long to leave her husband. If \'The Waves\' weaves strands of consciousness into a single broad cord, Hesselholdt’s book is more light-footed and choreographic, suggesting that contingency, change and tenuous separation can sometimes enable startling moments of connection ... Not every reader will find the dense, intricate mundanity of these interlinked monologues easy to appreciate. As in actual life, it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether something crucial is happening, or nothing at all. But those who find connections among these disparate moments will be rewarded with a rare and fragile experience: a rediscovery of the strength of narrative bonds, impossible to dissolve and difficult to forget, a miraculous substance that links the characters to one another and holds them in companionable relation.\
