I wish I could spend a summer on a remote Norwegian island, waiting for ducks to arrive.
James Rebanks describes the months he spent with Anna, a ‘duck woman’ in his memoir, The Place of Tides. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Norwegian
Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann
In a recent clinical supervision session at work, we were talking about ‘high-functioning freeze‘. I happened to be reading Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann at the time, and I immediately thought of the protagonist.
What happened to the protagonist – and if this book was called Girl, 2025, we would say that she had been sexually assaulted – unfolds in a series of vignettes. A sixteen-year-old girl is in Paris in 1983, alone, on a modelling assignment with a notable photographer, known only as ‘K’. On her first day in the city, she gets lost in the labyrinth of streets and can’t remember where her hotel is. In desperation, she goes to K’s studio, and the day turns into evening and then the next morning. There’s alcohol, cocaine and nightclubs involved.
If K can’t remember me – the sixteen-year-old girl who turned up on his doorstep one night – is everything that happened between us (and which I promised not to tell anyone) still our secret? Or is it only mine? Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. Most of my picks for the Hottest 100 of Australian Songs weren’t on the master list… anyway, these songs will always have me singing. Continue reading
Sample Saturday – spotted during Lists of Lists research
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three were spotted during my List of Lists 2024 research. Continue reading
Things That Are Making Me Happy This Week
01. Dinner at Hazel. Hard to pick a highlight because everything was delicious, but… the bite-sized crab hash (above); the trout with salted cucumber and horseradish; the beef with charred carrots; and the radicchio, orange and ricotta salad… would eat all of those things again in a heartbeat. Continue reading
Unquiet by Linn Ullmann
I reflected on the importance of place in terms of how we remember people when I was reading Linn Ullmann’s meditative work of autofiction, Unquiet.
Before I get to place (and grief), I will mention that it’s impossible to sort memoir from fiction in Unquiet. The protagonist is the daughter of a renowned Swedish filmmaker, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Fårö island home, where she spends time with him and her eight half-siblings (her father had five marriages, but never married the protaganist’s mother).
The girl, like most children, enjoyed making lists and keeping count, and if anyone asked her about her father she could have said: My father has four houses, two cars, five wives, one swimming pool, nine children, and one cinema. Continue reading
My latest listens
I’m benefiting from an influx of new audios at my library (finally). Continue reading
Some more quick reviews
I’ve struggled to write reviews for much of this year. I blame working from home. After a day of work, I have no desire to stay sitting at my desk. And so, I’ll continue to keep a record of what I’ve read with short reviews (these are very, very short). Continue reading
Three novellas
The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik Continue reading
Bookish (and not so bookish) Thoughts
1. There’s so much I love about this I hardly know where to begin. How about I just share my favourite quote from the article – “One thing that really divides Norway is bark.”
2. And there’s a book coming. #ALLTHEMEN I know are getting this book for upcoming birthdays/ Christmas.
3. All this talk of open fires reminds me of one of my favourite sayings (that I break out while watching my husband and brother build stupidly big fires) – “The bigger the fire, the bigger the fool.” Continue reading