This is really a remarkable collection of short (many very short) stories by Kjell Askildsen. They are subtle and dark, but often wryly funny, almost in spite of themselves. The Norwegian setting is there but rarely alluded to, which makes some of the stories seem like fables. They're full of old men who have had enough of life (the importance of bannisters is a repeated motif), couples falling apart, flirting with others, or finding they don't really know each other (see the title story), funerals, and brothers reluctantly interacting with siblings. In the ironically-titled "An Uplifting Funeral" these last two themes come together as the narrator ends up denying the existence of his twin brother and not to his benefit. The stories tackle the mundanity and unpleasantness of human nature, but somehow do so in a very humane way. It's also eminently quotable. From "The Bannister" (naturally there is a story with that title): “'But don’t you understand,' I said, 'that on occasion that banister is all I have to hold onto in life?' I immediately regretted having said it, precise formulations should be directed at contemplative people, otherwise things become a right mess". And from the end of "Gustav Herre": "What a stupid story, she said." Can we have more translations of Askildsen's work please?

This collection of short stories has been translated from the Norwegian by Stan Kinsella. While they cover place, family and memory in their various ways they preponderantly show a view of the fading and constraints of old age. Thomas in his eighties a writer is still recording the passing of his life. The reader might wonder how close those tales are to true autobiography.
A few of the tales are of teenage years – perhaps sixty to seventy years previously, in a harsh farming life with an abusive father. That life and then escape to a completely different lifestyle, but the reader can only wonder if the experiences fed into the later life choices and responses. We see a series on married life – again filled with dissatisfaction (and alcohol) making do, but seemingly not happy. The ambit of experience starts to move to the foreign holiday, sitting watching and enduring. A later tale tells of the satisfaction of the rapid clearing out of a dead wife’s possession leaving the flat and his life totally free of her – except the scolding from another in the family. Another the death of an elderly sister rarely seen. All are from the perspective of a detached viewer, really not interested in the views or feelings of the other.
But essential they talk of aging, meeting elderly friends and hearing of others dead and dying – however funerals might need to be avoided. But do you bother to build new friends and relationships if you think you are heading to death? Is it worth the effort? With no friends, there is no real reason to go out far, life contracts even further, then weakness creeps. Constrained in a room by disability or stairs, the view of the possibly “interesting” will be limited by the width of the window and the willingness of people outside to oblige. The mind will then be the only place to go – but mean while the essential writer survives with pen and the words.
The reader needs to decide through the clever visual creation of these places how much is true, how much is distortion or overlaid by delusional memories, or is a wished other. The later tales seem to be a way of not just marking the passing days, but affirming the writer is still alive. But collectively they mark the shrinking of mobility, occupations, companionship and reliance on just memory or the minutiae of every simple repeating day.
But reading the realities (woes?) of a man ill fitted to the community around him is not comfortable. His self imposed life could so easily become a close to reality to others as they age and weaken (even without the impact of Covid and such things). In reality of course he was never was as isolated as claimed because the writing of books is a reaching out to others, even if you do not want them to reply.

There are over 30 stories in this collection of under 300 pages. Some of them are very short, others are more standard short story length. The common themes here are dread, anger, sadness, and frustration. Many of the characters are elderly and facing the loss of their health and their own mortality. Others feature friends, relatives, and couples that aren’t quite connecting. These stories are realistic snapshots, but I found reading so many stories that are so full of sadness and frustration to be exhausting. However, if this is the mood you’re looking for, this book is a great choice.

Some of the characters appear in more than one story, but sometimes I could not tell if it was the actual same character or just the same common name. Maybe in book form this would be more apparent, I read an egalley.

My two favorite stories: “A Lovely Spot”, which features a couple visiting a family cabin. She is nervous and paranoid, he starts to feel it after too much wine.
“Thomas F’s Final Notes to the Public, Carl Lange”: A police officer accuses Carl of a crime, and his stress reaction is odd—making the officer think that maybe this guess will get him somewhere. Is this the Carl from the story “Carl”? I suspect so, as Carl (first story) and Carl’s father (second story) are similarly emotionless.

I’m not much of one for reading short stories, but I found this collection from acclaimed Norwegian writer Kjell Askildsen very entertaining indeed. More vignettes than fully-fledged out stories, I enjoyed the black absurdist humour, laconic dialogue and the insightful portrayal of the lack of human connection. Shades of Beckett and Kafka at times, but actually a completely original voice. Clever use of pauses, eloquent depiction of what’s not said rather than what is, and the ability to unsettle are all much in evidence. Not a volume to read straight through, but one to pick up and read just one or two at a time to get the full disorienting effect.

I found this a fairly unusual collection and one that could do with a bit more editing - there are a huge number of stories included but many of them are no more than pen portraits of a page and a half and, whilst some managed to be profound in their limited word count, many didn't add much to the whole. There are two broad themes at work here - the pains of being misunderstood in a long marriage and the indignities of growing old, particularly when one is estranged from one’s family. Towards the end this started to feel quite repetitive and it was a bit of a slog to finish, but I enjoyed looking for the threads between the stories and some (such as the titular piece) are very strong. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Vignette visits into lives of contemporary Norwegians, sometimes just a sliver of a view. Another gem from archipelago imprint.

"What a stupid story, she said.
Yes, he said."

Now, while I appreciate a book that provides its own review, it does tend to be the negative ones, meaning that, like this example, I read far too many pages for the sake of a quippy riposte. Far too many pages, as we have here, of an author who really did need to change the record. Far too many of these stories are of people stuck in a loveless relationship, and while she may be playing patience until he sees through an accident what she's really doing with the cards, or while she may be a bored housewife who declares first that she's going mad then that she's going for a new job instead, the stories are just too close together. The characters are of course quite the opposite – far apart – and therefore hit the wine bottle, either to justify their not talking or to have something in common.

The other trope here is for the characters to be on holiday, or in a holiday home, or something. They're still not talking, or not talking properly, and so they see strangers in the foliage, or get cuckolded, or think they're about to get cuckolded. And when our author wants to branch out and try something out, he has someone visit a care home, or a blind father, or go to a funeral with the rest of his family he's not seen in years, or yack inconsequentially about father issues. A lot of the pieces have the modernist style of unattributed dialogue, as well, so they're not terribly easy to read, and they're certainly not fun. Reviewing this with my general browser, common commuter taste in play, these offered nothing – a hermit with a clock in a bucket getting knocked about was a bright spark here, a kid getting atheism because his home burns down a welcome change of spirit.

It's only towards the end when variety stumbles unknowingly on to the pages, with a full copy of his award-winning 1983 opus, "Thomas F's Final Notes to the Public". This starts well, with a dryly humorous, Kafkaesque look at someone accused of a crime. And then gets into the crotchety old not understanding the younger generation, going to funerals, thinking they were better off dead. They might not be that wrong.

A quietly devastating collection of stories, mostly specific events taking place over the course of one day. They relate encounters between strangers or, just as often, between people who are related or living together who find they do not know each other well at all. There is a tendency for one person to guess what the other is thinking or how they will react to their, often provocative or even malevolent, behaviour. Combined with dialogue fraught with misunderstanding and evasion, this creates tense atmospheres with frequently surprising outcomes. As they progress, the stories become shorter and more observational, preoccupied with old age and death, and increasingly poignant. Scandinavian noir at its best and highly recommended.

This compilation of 37 stories is a series of vignettes that bring into view the lives and inner thinking of us: the elderly, wives, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, moms, and dads. That we are shaped by our memory and memories (faulty as they can be), and our shared plight with aloneness and loneliness. How we hide our true selves under bravado and cruelty, in fear that our weaknesses and neediness will be discovered. That death, love, and life can be scary, lingering, unwanted, ignored, painful, humorous, and wonderful.

You won’t find much drama or plot in this book. What you will get are interactions: a couple vacationing at a cabin; a son visiting his dad after a prolonged absence; a lonely man who is unable to ask out a waitress; an old man meeting another old man on a park bench; a widower who throws out all of his dead wife’s things so he’d finally have room for himself (who needs three drawers for underwear?).

Many of these vignettes are only a page or two; there are no wasted words. The longest story is Thomas F’s Final Notes to the Public Carl Lange. The plot is the police visit Carl to question him about a rape. What the story is really about is how he thinks and acts during and after this visit. It is spot on—to me—how an insecure person might react in such a situation. A wonderful story.

I highly recommend this book.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Archipelago Books for the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.