Ms. Ørstavik claims she wrote the novella in a fortnight. This seems plausible—and not in a bad way. Its raw immediacy is both central to the minutiae of its tragic present and to the author’s cast of mind, as she turns her thoughts to her hindsight-tinted past and uncertain future ... Ms. Ørstavik tenderly evokes her role as a caregiver, the indignities of her partner’s failing body, his need for both privacy and intimacy ... It isn’t Ms. Ørstavik’s achievement to wring pathos from her subject: it is drenched in it already. What is so impressive is her ability to capture—with precision, candor and, indeed, tenacity—her shifting sense of self, as the foundations on which it rests crumble with every passing moment.
... deeply intimate and harrowing – words and questions unable to be said but instead carried as a weight internally. In fewer than 100 pages this persists – from the opening ‘I love you’ to the last, Ti Amo is a complex look at grief, love and loneliness, longing, not veiled within a wider narrative or hidden under layers. The pain sits plainly on the page, challenging readers to either step away or carry this weight with them. It is a novel that confronts some of the hardest realities of our inevitable fate, to lose those close to us, and is tender and heartrending at once.
... deceptively slim ... There are harrowing pages in Ti Amo. It is unflinchingly autobiographical ... Hanne Ørstavik is an award-winning Norwegian novelist, and the translation by Martin Aitken is perfectly pitched to capture the volatility of the narrator’s thoughts and the painful detachment she needs when she discovers her own life force remains undiminished ... Tender, anguished and truthful.
