Acclaim for Lars Saabye Christensen, both in his native Norway and in translation, has ranked him alongside Karl Ove Knausgård, Jon Fosse and Hanne Ørstavik. Beatles (1984), the story of four Oslo boys united by their love for the band, established his name. The Half Brother (2001), which follows the difficult life of a man born in postwar Oslo, won him an IMPAC shortlist spot. With its tonal nuance and quietly amusing melancholy, Echoes of the City confirms him as one of Norway’s finest writers. It is a story of recovery from Nazi occupation, of a town and its people slowly emerging from the grip of postwar austerity. It considers the small, personal stories which would normally be consigned to the archive. Its characters map the city, revealing as they go the tiny decisions and turns of serendipity that determine the fate of Oslo and its individuals.
At the novel’s centre are the Kristoffersens: Ewald, an apathetic adman; loving, overstressed Maj, who becomes a treasurer for the Red Cross; and Jesper, their troubled young son, who vows “never [to] be fat” after seeing his father naked and steals the perfume he gives to his mother at Christmas, giving the money set aside to buy it to charity. These may seem like commonplace childhood antics, but they reflect the deeper-felt malaises of postwar Oslo: Jesper is a child of the late 1940s, occupied with questions of wealth, charity and fecundity. The local doctor reflects that peace makes people put on weight and become talkative and extravagant; Jesper’s fasting, silence and thriftiness reveal that the worry and discontent of the war still linger. Jesper and his generation, we realise, are at the heart of Christensen’s project.
Like the narrative, the characterisation of these individuals is slow but sure. As they move around Oslo, they almost imperceptibly relay a narrative baton, meeting – or sometimes merely catching a glimpse of – each other and handing on the story. We understand more about the Kristoffersens from their thoughts on each other than their reflections on themselves, and more still from their interactions with Jostein (the butcher’s son who loses his hearing), Fru Vik (the neighbour reluctantly dating an antiquarian bookseller), and Enzo Zanetti (a down-on-his-luck Italian pianist on the edge of society) .
The quietness also means that memorable scenes are thrown into contrast: Maj’s shameful trip to a department store, a character “ramming his elbow” into a gay man’s jaw before calmly ordering a shrimp sandwich, the “sorry story” of Jesper and Jostein skimming money from their Red Cross stamp sales. These all give vitality and subtlety, justifying the book’s length and leisurely pace. The scenes, the slowness, the complex characterisation are all translated consummately into English by Don Bartlett – another figure at the height of his craft, with a nimble ability to shift between voices.
Perhaps the novel’s most distinctive feature is the way its narrative is organised through the minutes of Red Cross board meetings. These allow Christensen to examine how women can build the cultural and social structures of a city, as well as offering an unembroidered record of their “sacrifice, loyalty and strength”.
• Echoes of the City, translated by Don Bartlett, is published by MacLehose (RRP £14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.
