Love by Hanne Orstavik
Love is set in a small village in north Norway. It follows the story of a mother and son, Vibeke and Jon, who have only lived there a few months. It is the evening before Jon’s ninth birthday and a travelling carnival has arrived in the village. Jon goes out to sell lottery tickets for his sports club and Vibeke sets off to the library. We follow them on their separate journeys through a cold winter's night; journeys filled with the weight of unrelenting menace and foreboding.
A palpable chill runs through the icy heart of this deceptively simple story, conveyed so precisely in Orstavik's sparse yet poetic language. Love explores the distances between people, while seamlessly weaving the two viewpoints tightly together, so that we are taken from Jon’s world to Vibeke’s and back again within just a few short paragraphs.
This slender novella is compelling, powerful and dark, packed with tension and yearning; a haunting tale about loneliness and the search for love. I was captivated until the very end.
This is a book I won't be lending to anybody in case I don't get it back. It's already on the to-be-read-again pile :-)
(Reviewed after receiving an ARC from And Other Stories in exchange for an honest review.)
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