Ratings3
Average rating4.3
Winner of the 2020 Believer Book Award for Fiction "A brilliant study of the mundane, full of unexpected detours and driving prose. Hjorth's novel ingeniously orbits the intimate stories that are possible only when a character has put words on paper and sent them through the post." – New York Times Book Review, “The Best Post Office Novel You Will Read Before the Election” "Vigdis Hjorth is one of my favorite contemporary writers." – Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood and How Should a Person Be? From the author of the 2019 National Book Award Longlisted Will and Testament Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she's not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her coworker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months. This is an existential scream of a novel about loneliness (and the postal service!), written in Vigdis Hjorth's trademark spare, rhythmic and cutting style.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm going to need more translations of Vigdis Hrjorth's 50 books please. The tone is dark, but the overall story is kind of existentialist-ish positive. Making meaning making meaning making meaning. Loved it.
Plusses:
+ Somehow a story about a PR firm is deep and interesting.
+ human interactions that don't require a traditional love story. at all.
+ humor across the spectrum, from wry chuckles to belly laughs
Minuses:
+ really, seriously, none.
A strange and hypnotic novel about apathy, human connection and EU directives about to change the Norwegian postal system. Politics, bureaucracy, ennui of the mundane, finding purpose. A workplace novel featuring a heroine who finds herself a stranger in her own life. My favorite part was the story about the school teacher asking her summer school pupils to write essays about unhappiness.