In an era when all language is subject to relentless algorithmic flattening, when books are so often rewarded for easy comprehension and bland sentiment, Range is a rebellious celebration of the singularity, and mystery, of humankind. We need more fiction like Nors’s. Let the weird children come.
A story of suspension between two realms, one on a granular day-to-day scale and one whose scale is incomprehensibly vast ... Nors is cagey about doling out important facts, lifting the reader’s veil of ignorance incrementally and often returning to fill in gaps. This recursive technique, which can build reader engagement, can also, at times, shroud her story in a layer of opacity to the point where passages can appear cryptic and awkwardly structured ... Reading a work in translation can raise the question of whether the issues lie with the writing or the translation. However, Dorthe Nors’ writing, both astral and terrestrial, is beautiful and at times poetic.
