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So Much for That Winter
Dorthe Nors follows up her acclaimed story collection Karate Chop with a pair of novellas that playfully chart the aftermath of two very twenty-first-century romances.
In "Days," a woman in her late thirties records her life in a series of lists, giving shape to the tumult of her days--one moment she is eating an apple, the next she is on the floor, howling like a dog. As the details accumulate, we experience with her the full range of emotions: anger, loneliness, regret, pain, and also joy, as the lists become a way to understand, connect to, and rebuild her life.
In "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space," a novella told in headlines, an avant-garde musician is dumped via text message. Fleeing the indignity of the breakup and friends who flaunt their achievements in life, career, and family, Minna unfriends people on Facebook, listens to Bach, and reads Ingmar Bergman, then decamps to an island near Sweden, "well suited to mental catharsis." A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis, So Much for That Winter explores how we shape and understand experience, and the disconnection and dislocation that define our twenty-first-century lives, with Nors's unique wit and humor.
In "Days," a woman in her late thirties records her life in a series of lists, giving shape to the tumult of her days--one moment she is eating an apple, the next she is on the floor, howling like a dog. As the details accumulate, we experience with her the full range of emotions: anger, loneliness, regret, pain, and also joy, as the lists become a way to understand, connect to, and rebuild her life.
In "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space," a novella told in headlines, an avant-garde musician is dumped via text message. Fleeing the indignity of the breakup and friends who flaunt their achievements in life, career, and family, Minna unfriends people on Facebook, listens to Bach, and reads Ingmar Bergman, then decamps to an island near Sweden, "well suited to mental catharsis." A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis, So Much for That Winter explores how we shape and understand experience, and the disconnection and dislocation that define our twenty-first-century lives, with Nors's unique wit and humor.
160 pages, Paperback
First published June 21, 2016
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About the author
Dorthe Nors
38 books253 followersDorthe Nors is a Danish author and writer. She is the first Danish author to be published in the American magazine The New Yorker. She was born in 1970 and studied literature and art history at the University of Aarhus. After publishing three novels, she wrote Karate Chop, her collection of short stories, in 2008 and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space in 2013. She has seen her short stories in various publications, including The Boston Review, Harpers and The New Yorker, and has contributed to anthologies in Denmark and Germany. Having international acclaim, she lives in rural Jutland, Denmark.
From http://pushkinpress.com/author/dorthe...
From http://pushkinpress.com/author/dorthe...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
April 14, 2022
I had read Dorthe Nors’ “Mirror, Shoulder, Signal; several years ago, and remembered liking it. She is a Danish author. I read a review of Nors’ oeuvre in The New York Review of Books (https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/... ), and the review was very favorable so I ordered some more books of hers. I ordered ‘Minna Needs a Rehearsal Space’ and I read that 2 weeks ago and did not know what to make of it. I liked it...it was a novella and I read it in one sitting. It was a whole series of sentences (some reviewers call them headlines) with full stops at the end of each sentence. Like:
• Minna doesn’t know how to live.
• Minna knows only how to think.
• Karin’s got everything that Minna wants.
• Karin’s got a dog, a man, and kids.
• Karin’s got 500 acres of land.
• Minna’s got zilch.
Karin is Minna’s older sister. The novella is about a breakup of a romantic relationship between Minna and her lover, Lars.
And then I opened up the book ‘So Much for That Winter’ (Graywolf Press) an hour ago, and I came upon the same novella (Minna Needs a Rehearsal Space), which was weird dontcha think?...plus another novella, ‘Days’. So I read ‘Days’ and it was OK. It was written in a similar fashion to that of ‘Minna Needs...’ except each sentence was preceded by a number. On the back cover of the book is this: “A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis.” I did write down something from the book because it resonated with me:
• ‘Made a note to myself: there’s the reality that the others keep an eye on, and next to it is my own.’A thousand people might witness an event, and that is so-called reality, but what each person witnesses is no doubt different...because we all differ from each other in physiological makeup, and we all come in with different life histories, and that informs how we perceive the world. No wonder why we can’t agree with each other! 🙃
Oh...I think the novella was also about a breakup of a romantic relationship. Because occasionally there are sentences interspersed in the novella such as... “I don’t want to, I cannot, and you mustn’t write me anymore”.
Note: Should give a shout-out to her interpreter at least for these books, Misha Hoekstra.
Reviews:
• Here is an excerpt from ‘Minna Needs...’: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/spec...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://tostevinwrites.com/2020/05/30...
• https://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...
• Minna doesn’t know how to live.
• Minna knows only how to think.
• Karin’s got everything that Minna wants.
• Karin’s got a dog, a man, and kids.
• Karin’s got 500 acres of land.
• Minna’s got zilch.
Karin is Minna’s older sister. The novella is about a breakup of a romantic relationship between Minna and her lover, Lars.
And then I opened up the book ‘So Much for That Winter’ (Graywolf Press) an hour ago, and I came upon the same novella (Minna Needs a Rehearsal Space), which was weird dontcha think?...plus another novella, ‘Days’. So I read ‘Days’ and it was OK. It was written in a similar fashion to that of ‘Minna Needs...’ except each sentence was preceded by a number. On the back cover of the book is this: “A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis.” I did write down something from the book because it resonated with me:
• ‘Made a note to myself: there’s the reality that the others keep an eye on, and next to it is my own.’A thousand people might witness an event, and that is so-called reality, but what each person witnesses is no doubt different...because we all differ from each other in physiological makeup, and we all come in with different life histories, and that informs how we perceive the world. No wonder why we can’t agree with each other! 🙃
Oh...I think the novella was also about a breakup of a romantic relationship. Because occasionally there are sentences interspersed in the novella such as... “I don’t want to, I cannot, and you mustn’t write me anymore”.
Note: Should give a shout-out to her interpreter at least for these books, Misha Hoekstra.
Reviews:
• Here is an excerpt from ‘Minna Needs...’: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/spec...
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://tostevinwrites.com/2020/05/30...
• https://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...
June 1, 2023
A masterpiece of spatial fiction, the forms of these two novellas are brilliantly experimental. Poetic and evocative. But devoid of narrative structure, reading these novellas is a bit like sifting through a mountain of gorgeous hand-painted confetti squares. For some readers, this will be intolerable reading -- boring and seemingly pointless. For others, it will provide hours of admiration and pleasure.
July 3, 2020
The Publisher Says: Dorthe Nors follows up her acclaimed story collection Karate Chop with a pair of novellas that playfully chart the aftermath of two very twenty-first century romances. In “Days,” a woman in her late thirties records her life in a series of lists, giving shape to the tumult of her days—one moment she is eating an apple, the next she is on the floor, howling like a dog. As the details accumulate, we experience with her the full range of emotions: anger, loneliness, regret, pain, and also joy, as the lists become a way to understand, connect to, and rebuild her life.
In “Minna Needs Rehearsal Space,” a novella told in headlines, an avant-garde musician is dumped via text message. Fleeing the indignity of the breakup, and friends who flaunt their achievements in life, career, and family, Minna unfriends people on Facebook, listens to Bach and reads Ingmar Bergman then decamps to an island near Sweden “well suited to mental catharsis.” A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis, So Much for That Winter explores how we shape and understand experience, and the disconnection and dislocation that define our twenty-first-century lives, with Nors’s unique wit and humor.
THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.
My Review: How a perfectly rational North American running at full tilt towards the last full decade of his life is seduced by a Danish lady of middling vintage into going all experimental and experiential with his reading:
Minna Needs Rehearsal Space doesn't she. I think Minna's major problem is that she can't see or hear herself anymore. I think Minna needs about a year away from her surface-obsessed life to get back to what is underneath the headlines. Minna can't be arsed to try to move on from the indignity of being dumped via text message? What makes you so special, sunshine, that you're immune from the rage and outrage that accompanies any and all intermingling of XX and YX persons?
Even her career, avant-garde musician, tells you that she's been to Paradise but she's never been to me. Charlene whinged those words in 1977! I don't know Author Nors, but I'm sure that as she's a Dane she wasn't listening to US pop music in 1977. Maybe she should go back and fill in a blank in her world experience!
(In case it needs saying out loud, the above isn't meant to be serious but rather to point out how very different Author is from character...one deep and deadly, the other shallow and affectless.)
I know that A Public Space has always been deeply committed to women's writing, and I laud them for it. This translation is well inside their wheelhouse as Author Nors presents us with a tale that could only be told by a woman about a woman. Minna is a collection of headlines; Minna is without internal awareness; Minna has just been dumped via text message.
So why does Minna crash so heavily, so thoroughly massively, into a male brain.
Days gives us numbered lists of quotidian activities and thoughts, a step-by-step way to say "this is what life is: First this, then that, and don't ever stop because lists that end are thrown away."
The entire point of reading these lists, these discrete and atomized moments, is to understand that life, Life, isn't what we thought it was. It isn't a film. It's the filming script. It's the continuity book without the costume shots.
So why, you ask me, is this not poetry, what makes this prose, how arbitrary is the line, why do you insist you don't like poetry and this feels pretty much like poetry. You're telling me, I hear you thinking, you like this and you don't like poetry but WHY isn't this poetry.
All I can tell you without getting into formal discussions that I don't have the credentials for or interest in is that it's clearly the prose side of the Great Divide. I know lots of energy goes into the "debate" between poetry fans (the aggressors) and the poetry atheists (me) to establish that I am wrong and poetry is wonderful. So stipulated, your honors.
I still don't like poetry. I still like Dorthe Nors's prose.
In “Minna Needs Rehearsal Space,” a novella told in headlines, an avant-garde musician is dumped via text message. Fleeing the indignity of the breakup, and friends who flaunt their achievements in life, career, and family, Minna unfriends people on Facebook, listens to Bach and reads Ingmar Bergman then decamps to an island near Sweden “well suited to mental catharsis.” A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis, So Much for That Winter explores how we shape and understand experience, and the disconnection and dislocation that define our twenty-first-century lives, with Nors’s unique wit and humor.
THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A REVIEW COPY AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.
My Review: How a perfectly rational North American running at full tilt towards the last full decade of his life is seduced by a Danish lady of middling vintage into going all experimental and experiential with his reading:
Minna Needs Rehearsal Space doesn't she. I think Minna's major problem is that she can't see or hear herself anymore. I think Minna needs about a year away from her surface-obsessed life to get back to what is underneath the headlines. Minna can't be arsed to try to move on from the indignity of being dumped via text message? What makes you so special, sunshine, that you're immune from the rage and outrage that accompanies any and all intermingling of XX and YX persons?
Even her career, avant-garde musician, tells you that she's been to Paradise but she's never been to me. Charlene whinged those words in 1977! I don't know Author Nors, but I'm sure that as she's a Dane she wasn't listening to US pop music in 1977. Maybe she should go back and fill in a blank in her world experience!
(In case it needs saying out loud, the above isn't meant to be serious but rather to point out how very different Author is from character...one deep and deadly, the other shallow and affectless.)
I know that A Public Space has always been deeply committed to women's writing, and I laud them for it. This translation is well inside their wheelhouse as Author Nors presents us with a tale that could only be told by a woman about a woman. Minna is a collection of headlines; Minna is without internal awareness; Minna has just been dumped via text message.
So why does Minna crash so heavily, so thoroughly massively, into a male brain.
Days gives us numbered lists of quotidian activities and thoughts, a step-by-step way to say "this is what life is: First this, then that, and don't ever stop because lists that end are thrown away."
10. Took in the bottle of wine the neighbor had placed on my mat:
11. Excuse the noise, Love, Majbritt, it said; so that's her name, I thought,
12. and set the bottle on top of the fridge,
13. moved it under the sink,
14. I'll drink it for Pentecost,
15. for Pentecost when I'm happy,
16. really happy.
The entire point of reading these lists, these discrete and atomized moments, is to understand that life, Life, isn't what we thought it was. It isn't a film. It's the filming script. It's the continuity book without the costume shots.
16. Chopped lettuce without cutting my finger
17. and decided that perhaps in time something good
would happen. I do know that something will, I know
it, like when you're riding a train across Zealand in
winter:
18. darkness darkness darkness darkness
19 and then suddenly a greenhouse crackling warm
20. in the middle of it all.
So why, you ask me, is this not poetry, what makes this prose, how arbitrary is the line, why do you insist you don't like poetry and this feels pretty much like poetry. You're telling me, I hear you thinking, you like this and you don't like poetry but WHY isn't this poetry.
All I can tell you without getting into formal discussions that I don't have the credentials for or interest in is that it's clearly the prose side of the Great Divide. I know lots of energy goes into the "debate" between poetry fans (the aggressors) and the poetry atheists (me) to establish that I am wrong and poetry is wonderful. So stipulated, your honors.
I still don't like poetry. I still like Dorthe Nors's prose.
January 31, 2016
minna's broken heart dwells in the breast of an optimist.danish author dorthe nors is a most curious and innovative writer. if that wasn't evident in her short story collection, karate chop (the first of her books to be translated into english), surely the two stylistically inventive novellas in her new work, so much for that winter (minna mangler et ovelokale / dage), will make it abundantly clear. composed of two different pieces, "minna needs rehearsal space" and "days," nors's latest book to be rendered from the danish, despite what at first glance might seem like a sterile, dispassionate style, offers a rich, lively, and emotionally fertile glimpse of two women wending their way through hardship.
minna is suddenly unsure.in the longer of the two entries, "minna needs rehearsal space," nors employs a series of one sentence "headlines" to convey the story of her titular character—newly single (and broken up with via text message)—as she contends with frustration, loneliness, an overbearing sister, and successful friends. with bach and bergman by her (figurative) side, minna sets off for an island repose and emotional convalescence. nors's staccato "headlines," many no more than a few words each, inexplicably coalesce into a resonant, believable, and somewhat melancholy narrative. from the onset, it seemed unlikely to be successful, but "minna needs rehearsal space" is wonderfully alive, with minna's character both convincing and credible.
the song disappeared, down toward the bottom.
the song stands still among the herring.
everything else belongs to another reality.
everything else, minna thinks to herself, is mere geography.
9. thought that the worst thing about the things that change us for life, is that every day we have to persuade ourselves not to look at them and how they attest to the insignificance with which we're shuffled around, we're lost and found and lost again,the shorter piece, "days," is a diary-like record made up of numbered lists. the thirty-something woman at the heart of this novella is introspective and full of emotions, but also constantly reminding herself that days elapse and the promise of happiness is contingent upon her keeping going. i'm not sure how or why numbered lists (like the "headlines" before them) work so well in evoking and evincing, but they do, often to remarkable effect.
15. and it isn't that i don't believe in the good in others.so much for that winter is uniquely composed, yet eminently readable. nors's experimental style permits a sidelong glance, not only into perhaps the scaffolding upon which stories are built, but also the spaces between things—much as a painting or song reveals itself in the interims between brushstrokes or notes. dorthe nors is doing some fascinating work and her chosen forms function as fictional facades, ably demonstrating that feeling may flourish in even the most unlikely of prose techniques.
16. it's that the others don't believe in the good in me.
10. biked through the city, just one person on wheels among thousands of others on the way home to their own, exhausted and holding every conceivable unshareable thing inside,
11. rubbed the skins off new potatoes
12. and set the grasses in a vase on the counter,
13. thought of blackbirds and other singing creatures,
14. of all there's been, and tomorrow,
15. of my obligations, my dreams, my dusty sandals,
16. and then that which despite everything still calls,
17. come.
*translated from the danish by misha hoekstra (hans christian andersen, christian jungersen)
June 2, 2017
3.5 These two very short novellas are deceptively simple, but I did find them oddly compelling. Each focus on a heroine who has recently been dumped and how she attempts to continue on in the face of such devastation. In reporting their day to day mundane lives, one in single sentences, the other in a series of lists, one would think that monotony would set in quickly, but Nors has an uncanny ability to keep one interested and moving on - much like her two protagonists. (PS this SHOULD have gotten a Goldsmith Prize nomination, IMHO! Much better and more innovative than some of the other nominees!)
May 8, 2017
If you’d described the two novellas in this book to me before I read it I probably wouldn’t have read it so thanks for not doing that! I loved this book. It was top of the charts wonderful. I think it is my favorite read of 2016.
June 23, 2016
[actually 3.5, but the first novella is a 4.5]
Ever since reading her collection of stark short stories, Karate Chop, I've been looking forward to more of Danish author Dorthe Nors' work being translated to English. And So Much for That Winter is beyond exciting, because it's two longer pieces that both specifically highlight the magic that Nors can create in her terse sentence styling. She accomplishes so much while saying so little and it never ceases to stun me. So on to the two novellas that make up this collection (if two of something makes a collections, that is).
MINNA NEEDS REHEARSAL SPACE
First of all, I don't think I've ever related to a sentence more than I have that last one. Anyway, that's beside the point. Minna Needs Rehearsal Space is my favorite of the two novellas -- I loved it. I loved it so much that I feel comfortable saying just read this one, you don't even need to read Days. But more on that later.
This story is written in a series of headlines, because the man who just broke Minna's heart is a reporter. And it's brilliant. It sounds like it would be dull to read, but it's both incredibly readable and it commits extraordinary acts of beauty. Narrator, Minna, breaks modern day life and love into small simplistic bits that will make you laugh and tear up and be amazed at how Nors has managed to capture how it feels to be a human today. Constantly clever and moving, this novella carries a strong plot with memorable (needy, horrible) characters you've most likely seen before in your life.
If you're a fan of Jenny Offill's Dept of Speculation or Edouard Leve's Suicide, seek this one out.
DAYS
I love Nors and I want to love everything she ever does and I don't want to say anything bad about any part of So Much for That Winter, but I didn't love Days. Though similarly written, this time in the form of lists, it was the opposite in that it did not feel as compulsively readable. I mean it was easy to read, but I didn't want to read it that badly. The main character is a writer who doesn't actually seem to have a job who is going through some vague struggle and we get to see her day to day actions and thoughts. If at any point I was given a reason to care about the main character, it may have been interesting. But for the most part I was just wondering if I would figure out what was going on and then was disappointed when I didn't really.
There are definitely good moments in it. I enjoyed some of the narrator's thoughts. But I also wished the lists could have been focused and actually functioned as lists or had some sort of visible reasoning. But some of the lists, unlike the one shared above, didn't have any sort of verb so it wasn't like a list of each thing she did. I don't know. I was just unclear about the whole thing the whole way through. So much for that novella, right?
Maybe there's something I just didn't pick up on, but I personally recommend Minna Needs Rehearsal Space (luckily the longer of the two) and can give only give a shrug and an "it was ok I guess" to Days.
I think So Much for That Winter is worth getting just for Minna, I feel that strongly about the novella.
Full review: Outlandish Lit
Ever since reading her collection of stark short stories, Karate Chop, I've been looking forward to more of Danish author Dorthe Nors' work being translated to English. And So Much for That Winter is beyond exciting, because it's two longer pieces that both specifically highlight the magic that Nors can create in her terse sentence styling. She accomplishes so much while saying so little and it never ceases to stun me. So on to the two novellas that make up this collection (if two of something makes a collections, that is).
MINNA NEEDS REHEARSAL SPACE
Minna and Karin took a class together.
Karin latched onto Minna.
Minna is somewhat of a host species.
First of all, I don't think I've ever related to a sentence more than I have that last one. Anyway, that's beside the point. Minna Needs Rehearsal Space is my favorite of the two novellas -- I loved it. I loved it so much that I feel comfortable saying just read this one, you don't even need to read Days. But more on that later.
This story is written in a series of headlines, because the man who just broke Minna's heart is a reporter. And it's brilliant. It sounds like it would be dull to read, but it's both incredibly readable and it commits extraordinary acts of beauty. Narrator, Minna, breaks modern day life and love into small simplistic bits that will make you laugh and tear up and be amazed at how Nors has managed to capture how it feels to be a human today. Constantly clever and moving, this novella carries a strong plot with memorable (needy, horrible) characters you've most likely seen before in your life.
If you're a fan of Jenny Offill's Dept of Speculation or Edouard Leve's Suicide, seek this one out.
DAYS
I love Nors and I want to love everything she ever does and I don't want to say anything bad about any part of So Much for That Winter, but I didn't love Days. Though similarly written, this time in the form of lists, it was the opposite in that it did not feel as compulsively readable. I mean it was easy to read, but I didn't want to read it that badly. The main character is a writer who doesn't actually seem to have a job who is going through some vague struggle and we get to see her day to day actions and thoughts. If at any point I was given a reason to care about the main character, it may have been interesting. But for the most part I was just wondering if I would figure out what was going on and then was disappointed when I didn't really.
1. Woke an hour early
2. made instant coffee,
3. drank it,
4. stood by my kitchen window the same way I stood by my kitchen window when I lived on the island of Fanø and went down to the beach every day and crushed razor shells underfoot: Why do I live here? I’d wondered
5. and couldn’t have known that one day I would stand in a flat in Valby and look at the crooked tulips in the backyard and wonder the same thing.
There are definitely good moments in it. I enjoyed some of the narrator's thoughts. But I also wished the lists could have been focused and actually functioned as lists or had some sort of visible reasoning. But some of the lists, unlike the one shared above, didn't have any sort of verb so it wasn't like a list of each thing she did. I don't know. I was just unclear about the whole thing the whole way through. So much for that novella, right?
Maybe there's something I just didn't pick up on, but I personally recommend Minna Needs Rehearsal Space (luckily the longer of the two) and can give only give a shrug and an "it was ok I guess" to Days.
I think So Much for That Winter is worth getting just for Minna, I feel that strongly about the novella.
Full review: Outlandish Lit
July 10, 2016
There was a time when the experimental structure of this book would have won my heart so easily. How new and daring, I would have thought. A novella that's also a poem; a novella that's a series of lists! I loved this kind of thing in my Early Days even when, over and over again, the New & Daring so often revealed itself to be disenchanted with everything. You were going to get the frisson of defying convention, sure enough, but then: pffft. To get the frisson you had to sacrifice the pleasures of conventional narratives, which offer wisdom, hope, and hope of wisdom. So I came to this book with fear of disappointment.
But then, joy of joys, I met Minna. Minna is the heroine of Experimental Novella #1, "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space." Minna's thoughts are related not in paragraphs but in short lines, one after the other, poem-like. OH DEAR, I thought on page 2. This could start to be really artificial and pretentious. But Minna, bless her, is not pretentious. She's endearing and earnest and lovelorn and hapless in a Greta-Gerwig way, loving a reporter named Lars who breaks up with her by text and then writes a lengthy newspaper story praising her rival, a musician who has abandoned classical guitar for pop music (Minna is a composer who listens to Bach, reads Ingmar Bergman the way that Bridget Jones ate Milk Trays, and is trying to compose a sonata). The ending is both funny and convincing, equal parts hope and wisdom.
Experimental Novella #2, "Days," is not quite as accessible as Minna's story and doesn't have as much plot, but in some ways it's more profound. It manages to have the hapless Greta Gerwig quality (the narrator is continually going on runs through cemeteries), to ask existential questions in surprisingly affecting ways, AND to give the cemetery-jogger a sweet old-fashioned kinship with her parents. More, please, Dorthe. Much more.
But then, joy of joys, I met Minna. Minna is the heroine of Experimental Novella #1, "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space." Minna's thoughts are related not in paragraphs but in short lines, one after the other, poem-like. OH DEAR, I thought on page 2. This could start to be really artificial and pretentious. But Minna, bless her, is not pretentious. She's endearing and earnest and lovelorn and hapless in a Greta-Gerwig way, loving a reporter named Lars who breaks up with her by text and then writes a lengthy newspaper story praising her rival, a musician who has abandoned classical guitar for pop music (Minna is a composer who listens to Bach, reads Ingmar Bergman the way that Bridget Jones ate Milk Trays, and is trying to compose a sonata). The ending is both funny and convincing, equal parts hope and wisdom.
Experimental Novella #2, "Days," is not quite as accessible as Minna's story and doesn't have as much plot, but in some ways it's more profound. It manages to have the hapless Greta Gerwig quality (the narrator is continually going on runs through cemeteries), to ask existential questions in surprisingly affecting ways, AND to give the cemetery-jogger a sweet old-fashioned kinship with her parents. More, please, Dorthe. Much more.
March 19, 2017
This probably isn't the best Dorthe Nors to start with since it might leave the impression that she is a writer who uses gimmicks exclusively, which isn't the case. Aesthetically it makes sense to package these two novellas (one "made of headlines" and one "a series of lists") together, as U.S. publisher Graywolf Press has done, but UK publisher Pushkin Press provides a better overall view with Karate Chop & Minna Needs Rehearsal Space where the more standard short story formats of Karate Chop: Stories are combined with the "headlines" of "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space." So don't be misled by the formats here if you chance upon "So Much for That Winter" first.
Both of "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space" (I'll call it "Minna" from now on) and "Days" (where the first line is "So much for that winter.") can be seen as emulating the daily reading of many of the online community in the 21st century where often our social interactions consist of reading and commenting on Twitter or Facebook timelines or Instagram posts or mousing over click-bait factoids of "10 things you didn't know about celebrity/actor xyz" or "12 facts behind the scenes of the latest movie/tv-series". Much of "Minna" and "Days" could actually be read as a series of tweets as many entries don't exceed that medium's 140-character limit. So this may be experimental prose but it is in a format that many will find quite familiar and comfortable.
So there is a comfort in the medium, but there is an extra challenge to the writer to provide background, build character, create tension, provide drama and suspense and to finally provide resolution and a final release with the minimalist means available. The challenge to the reader is to attempt to perceive beyond the minimalism and decide how well that is all communicated to them.
"Minna" works with shorter statements but is more direct about its circumstances. You learn very early that composer Minna has broken up with her boyfriend Lars and that she is also in need of a rehearsal workspace. "Days" has longer entries, numbering usually 10 or 12 a day, that provide more exact detail of specific daily tasks and events. But the events behind the scenes are more obscure and require some guess work. Something has created a life-crisis for the nameless protagonist (but who has what seems to be an "evil-half" that she calls Kali, presumably named after the Hindu goddess) and it is likely something to do with a lost boyfriend who was perhaps in America. Both women embark on journeys to find their way forward. Minna's is a single train ride and that of Days consists of constant trips to cemeteries.
"Minna" is the easier and lighter story to follow here, but "Days" is more mysterious and intriguing and will probably reward several readings. I look forward to further Dorthe Nors and I was excited to see that her Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was on the 2017 International Booker longlist.
Bonus Track:
Speaking of Listicles and Factoids, here are
5 Reasons to go to Denmark by Dorthe Nors. (Feb. 23, 2017 posting, link still active as of March, 2017)
Both of "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space" (I'll call it "Minna" from now on) and "Days" (where the first line is "So much for that winter.") can be seen as emulating the daily reading of many of the online community in the 21st century where often our social interactions consist of reading and commenting on Twitter or Facebook timelines or Instagram posts or mousing over click-bait factoids of "10 things you didn't know about celebrity/actor xyz" or "12 facts behind the scenes of the latest movie/tv-series". Much of "Minna" and "Days" could actually be read as a series of tweets as many entries don't exceed that medium's 140-character limit. So this may be experimental prose but it is in a format that many will find quite familiar and comfortable.
So there is a comfort in the medium, but there is an extra challenge to the writer to provide background, build character, create tension, provide drama and suspense and to finally provide resolution and a final release with the minimalist means available. The challenge to the reader is to attempt to perceive beyond the minimalism and decide how well that is all communicated to them.
"Minna" works with shorter statements but is more direct about its circumstances. You learn very early that composer Minna has broken up with her boyfriend Lars and that she is also in need of a rehearsal workspace. "Days" has longer entries, numbering usually 10 or 12 a day, that provide more exact detail of specific daily tasks and events. But the events behind the scenes are more obscure and require some guess work. Something has created a life-crisis for the nameless protagonist (but who has what seems to be an "evil-half" that she calls Kali, presumably named after the Hindu goddess) and it is likely something to do with a lost boyfriend who was perhaps in America. Both women embark on journeys to find their way forward. Minna's is a single train ride and that of Days consists of constant trips to cemeteries.
"Minna" is the easier and lighter story to follow here, but "Days" is more mysterious and intriguing and will probably reward several readings. I look forward to further Dorthe Nors and I was excited to see that her Mirror, Shoulder, Signal was on the 2017 International Booker longlist.
Bonus Track:
Speaking of Listicles and Factoids, here are
5 Reasons to go to Denmark by Dorthe Nors. (Feb. 23, 2017 posting, link still active as of March, 2017)
March 1, 2019
Nors is clearly a talented author, but the style of the book didn't really do it for me. I liked Minna's section because the simple sentences and repetitive phrases suited her state of mind. The section made entirely of lists is what lost me. It didn't feel like there was a purpose to the list format, besides splitting up lines in a way that would be better suited to a poem. The numbers didn't have any correlation to the event they described, so I just didn't get it. That said, Nors managed to perfectly convey the emotions of two women who can only be described as lost. The word choices and vague but beautiful phrases conveyed events without getting bogged down on details. Two great character studies.
July 19, 2016
Such a clever darling!
I nodded knowingly, and I wept with laughter.
She is pitch perfect and delicious!
Most days, I am Minna. She wove her way around my brain so tightly, that I couldn't sleep for all the neutrons firing.
I nodded knowingly, and I wept with laughter.
She is pitch perfect and delicious!
Most days, I am Minna. She wove her way around my brain so tightly, that I couldn't sleep for all the neutrons firing.
May 31, 2018
3.5 stars. Hard to know how to rate this as I liked the first novella much more than the second. Either way, the book was inventive, poetic and delicate and I felt/ remembered the characters' angst.
October 1, 2017
really enjoyed both of the stories, but a special mention goes to the second one, 'days'. breathtaking, unique & profound.
October 17, 2022
Two innovative novellas… one written in headlines alone, one written as a series of lists, both about women who have recently been left broken-hearted and are coping with 21st century breakups. I found both really compelling…. My only reservation is that both formats somehow kept me at a distance, and felt a little cold. Really creative and unique though….
May 21, 2017
I planned to not like this, though it was given to me by someone I trust utterly. "This will feel gimmicky," I thought to myself, believing I would not have the grace and insight this friend had to rise above the dynamic not-regular format. Wrong again! I loved both novellas, and while I could not have loved them for many pages longer than they were, part of the genius is in the fact that they are not many pages longer than they are. They are just the right length. I did not read them back to back, which I am glad of, because I could savor each as a stand-alone item and I did not overtax my conventional little mind by pushing it a bridge too far trying to take both in back to back. I copied down many little gems of poetic loveliness and wit and am very glad I read this lovely work.
August 6, 2016
"Minna Needs Rehearsal Space" is the more accessible of the two novellas. Kudos to the translator for both works here; Nors has a dry sense of humor, which I'm guessing must be difficult to convey in another language.
May 16, 2022
3.5 stars.
Two novellas, female perspectives, and set in the minds of the two leads; told in non-traditional style. At 147 pp. (in the ARC) a quick read. At times amusing. Worth checking out.
Two novellas, female perspectives, and set in the minds of the two leads; told in non-traditional style. At 147 pp. (in the ARC) a quick read. At times amusing. Worth checking out.
February 3, 2016
The strength of the first novella makes up for the slightly less brilliant second. Glad to have found another author to add to my "Must Reads".
February 2, 2017
1. I didn't want it to end
2. and I want most things to end.
2. and I want most things to end.
Read
November 20, 2018How can I rate a book of two novellas when I loved one (Minna Needs Rehearsal Space) and hated the other (Days)?
September 29, 2022
Two novellas - Minna Needs Rehearsal Space and Days - about two different women: Minna, a composer, the other unnamed, a writer, both are without romantic love, marriage, children, both want connection and yet also shy away from it. Minna is written in short declarative, mostly one-sentence statements, Days is written in numbered lists, each day for the narrator starting over from scratch, at 1. Though quasi-experimental in form, they are both easy to read, although Days is a tad more inscrutable, Minna is lighter, a bit funnier, but both are often heartbreaking, and pack an emotional wallop. A kind of maximalist prose compressed into minimalist forms, giving the feeling of living minute to minute, hour to hour, day by day. Days really affected me.
February 23, 2016
<3 Dorthe Nors. Just <3. The playfulness, the natural, effortless feel of these novellas, the strong but never overpowering voice, the tight integration of setting, the unexpectedly moving places they reach, the formal invention. Just wow. Reading these novellas make me feel like a child who has found a small precious thing in the grass. (The characters spend a lot of time enjoying the small gifts of urban (parks, gardens, cemeteries, harbors) or island nature, so it seems apt!)
I read 2014's Karate Chop, Nors's first story collection, which I also adored. But that one was a much darker book, so I was happily surprised to discover that Nors can ply a vastly different register. Still, her fingerprints are quite discernible and like fingerprints are alleged to be, highly distinctive in all the work I've read so far (all that's come out in English). I'll be excited to read her entire oeuvre! If only I knew Danish and cut skip the translation lag.
I don't have a sole criticism to make here, so I reckon it's 5 stars!
I read 2014's Karate Chop, Nors's first story collection, which I also adored. But that one was a much darker book, so I was happily surprised to discover that Nors can ply a vastly different register. Still, her fingerprints are quite discernible and like fingerprints are alleged to be, highly distinctive in all the work I've read so far (all that's come out in English). I'll be excited to read her entire oeuvre! If only I knew Danish and cut skip the translation lag.
I don't have a sole criticism to make here, so I reckon it's 5 stars!
February 7, 2021
Very much enjoyed “Minna Needs Rehearsal Space” for content and form. Overall, the attention this book gets for inventive form is warranted. The entire book is written as lists of information. “Minna Needs Rehearsal Space” is written as third person but reads as first person; the tone implies someone referencing themselves in third person. It gives a sense of being overwhelmed with life and trying to sort through individual thought, searching for organization and solutions. “Days” is written as straight-up numbered lists, giving the sense of trying to find meaning in each day of life. Very interesting method!!
August 25, 2016
I really did enjoy this book. I enjoyed it so much I've read it twice already. I also want to say I enjoyed BOTH novellas and not just the first one. I'm really not sure what's missing from the second half of the book I just know from reading around it wasn't an enjoyable for most? But I thought both styles and sections were equally well crafted. I'll definitely be reading more by dorthe nors and probably will give this book to at least one person at Christmas
January 3, 2018
“ Minna needs an asshole-filter!” Apparent simplicity is deceptive. Nors has a talent for just the right word; feelings, experiences are evoked, that strike a chord in the reader, at least this one... the expression of pain often laced with subtle humor is so human, it stays with you...laughing in the same time as crying! That’s precious
I am looking forward to reading other books by the author
I am looking forward to reading other books by the author
July 16, 2016
I won this through a Goodreads giveaway.
This book is two innovative novellas - the first is written in short 'headlines' and the second is brief, listed diary entries. It is pretty simplistic at first glance, but there is a lot more beneath the surface. This is an interesting take on almost experimental fiction, and I would recommend it is you are into that sort of thing.
This book is two innovative novellas - the first is written in short 'headlines' and the second is brief, listed diary entries. It is pretty simplistic at first glance, but there is a lot more beneath the surface. This is an interesting take on almost experimental fiction, and I would recommend it is you are into that sort of thing.
February 6, 2017
5 stars for Minna Needs Rehearsal Space, 3 stars for Days.
The first novella was amazing and unlike anything I've ever read and I could definitely relate to Minna.
Because the second novella was in first person pov I felt like I couldn't really get a full picture of the main character as we were so close to her, I did like the numbered lists corresponding to her seemingly boring days.
The first novella was amazing and unlike anything I've ever read and I could definitely relate to Minna.
Because the second novella was in first person pov I felt like I couldn't really get a full picture of the main character as we were so close to her, I did like the numbered lists corresponding to her seemingly boring days.
August 11, 2017
It surprised me that I enjoyed this book and found the two stories oddly engaging--the first story written as a series of sentences about a woman recovering from and breakup (she was informed about it via text message by her ex-lover)) and the second is a series of lists about another woman's daily life that, combined, give a touching insight into her daily life.
September 14, 2016
Two stories told in short, loosely-connected sentences that somehow make novellas. They were unique from one another, but both special. A thoughtful look at what makes modern relationships and the end of those relationships both sad and beautiful.
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