A review by claire_fuller_writer
Love by Hanne Ørstavik

4.0

For such a short book (131 pages) Ørstavik does something very clever: using what almost feels like a film device - dynamic cutting - to move between very short scenes in an abrupt and jarring way. Sometimes it takes a line or two to even know which of the two main characters we are with, and we might spend then a few more lines with them, or a chapter, before we jump back inside the other character's head. This technique ramps up the tension. Vibeke, a single mother believes her eight year old son, Jon to be in bed. Not checking on him, (and in fact not once thinking about him during the whole of the book), she goes out to a funfair, hooks up with a man and goes to a bar with him. Meanwhile Jon, believing his mother has just popped to the shops to buy ingredients for his birthday cake (he's nine the next day), goes out to play with a neighbour and is then distracted. You know it's not going to end well. I'm not always the greatest fan of what's quite a mannered and conscious way of writing in the northern European literary tradition, but this one I really enjoyed.