“But nothing grows, the moonlight is only an illusion of sunlight."

“But listen now, don’t look at the clock, you have to be awake, ‘cause I want to see you pale. My story is about blood. Not poetic blood with beauty in it. No. Ugly. Awful. Blood and slime and pus. Yes? You’re screwing up your forehead. I told you it wouldn’t be beautiful. Because it’s the truth what I’m about to say”.

With those words the nameless woman with the red suitcase begins her story. The woman is the main character in Torborg Nedraas’ breakthrough novel Nothing Grows by Moonlight. The poetic and enigmatic title of the book reflects the alluring quality of the merciless tale that is both somber and dark, yet also portrays female strength and bravery. 

A man meets an unknown woman at the train station and invites her home; she’s carrying a small red suitcase. This is the night she tells her personal story to a man she just met. She reveals the story of her first relationship with an older man, multiple abortions and of the excruciating feeling of shame that so unforgivably will shred a woman to pieces. A story that begins in the spring, the spring she finished secondary school, and she is 15-years-old. It was the spring she fell in love with a married man, Johannes, a teacher at her school.

They’re intimate for the first time in the woods, followed by months where she hears nothing from him. And this is the way their relationship will continue to unfold. The relationship must be hidden for all it's worth.  Johannes contacts her if- and when he feels like it, and she, on her end, becomes more and more desperate to meet him. When she is with him, she can forget about the other aspects of her life, her father struggling in the mines and her mother fighting her own demons at home. Their relationship exists only during the night hours, at dusk, in the moonlight, stolen moments of happiness that are shattered when reality strikes. During the day his feelings cools off, and she alternates between longing to see him and hoping to get over him. And then Johannes ends it, and the main character finds out that she’s pregnant. Having children outside of marriage, however, is not accepted. Her financial situation would not allow it, and nor would the people of her town.  And while Johannes happily marries the daughter of one of the most respected men in town, the book's main character is left with the humiliation and slander of her judgmental surroundings.

The book is especially powerful because it blatantly describes a girl's naive love, and her situation of dependence on the male gender that allows men to exploit her and derive her of any sense of pride or dignity.  It depicts a woman of immense strength and of her journey to come to terms with the constant conflicting female roles as objects of male lust and of purity and innocence.  The book is not only about the narrator, but also about all the people she meets along her way. Once the narrator saw “ a girl, a whore, who was bending over to pick up some paper money. She didn’t want the money; she said she wanted to throw it in the face of the man who had tossed it after her. But she put it in her purse in a terrible hurry . . .she couldn’t afford to throw it in anybody’s face and couldn’t afford a little pride”. The book deals with a woman's situation and shame, but it is also about men in terrible working conditions, and with dark secrets; it’s about the outliers of society and the judgments that are thrust upon them with so little compassion.

It’s not hard to imagine that this book was controversial when it was first published in 1947. Yet, it is just as relevant today. The book deals with heavy topics such as feminism, harmful work conditions, abortion, infidelity and shame, topics that are partly taboo even today. The writings of Nedreaas are distinct in both form and content. Her poetic voice combined with her style of writing novels in the short story form has granted her a position as a prominent writer and has undoubtedly given her an unshakable place in Norwegian literary history.

Torborg Nedreaas was far from a traditional woman of her time. Her willingness to present and question the bias and injustice in society became one of the foremost characteristics of Nedreaas’ authorship. While she maintained that political literature was worthless without artistic ability, she famously proclaimed that there is no distinction between politics and art, and she used her own artistic gifts to convey her political views in a gripping and approachable manner. Nothing Grows by Moonlight is no exception; rather it may be one of her most perfect examples of the rule.

This story about a woman who is betrayed by her partner, and who, in the wake of this betrayal, feels like abortion is her only option is both ugly and awful; but most importantly it’s reality. “ It’s really a banal story. It’s just that it’s never been told. It’s the kind of thing that people carry around by themselves. The kind that poets never write about”.  There is little hope and sunshine on the pages of this novel, this is as far from chick-lit you can get; however, what you are given is a window into real life and real people. Nedreaas is aiming a spotlight directly at the rock bottom of our society, at the shameful darkness; and she does it with such poetic nerve that even the most bothered reader can’t avert their eyes.

The 900 year old man.

I finally finished Knut Hamsun's epic work Markens Grode or The Growth of The Soil, as is its translated title. I received this book from my grandmother for Christmas after multiple quite obvious hints that this book was at the top of my wishlist. Why it then would take me until now to read it is just life, more importantly I could not be more happy that I finally sat down, devoted the time, and experienced these pages.

The book does exactly what it is most famous for, namely celebrate nature and the man of nature. Hamsun's stripped style of writing and strong voice does this so effectively that even I was mourning the loss of a simpler time were materialism and capitalism did not disrupt our everyday life of reaping and harvesting. Most fetching though, is the crude quietness of this book that creates an atmosphere where emotions are not spoken, but only felt; and moreover, petty issues and our current lives' more common emotions such as jealousy or insecurity are completely circumcised from the characters lives. This is a book about survival in its simplest form, it is about kindness, duty, gratitude, hard work and love. And not the mushy Hollywood love either, but the love you learn to recognize for people that are there for you when you need them and that simply "aren't that bad". It is the perfect reminder of how we may be most happy doing the best we can and making the most out of what we have, without wasting time looking for the next, best and newest. Best of all, Hamsun's famous work manages to be humorous, mythical and historical at the same time.

It is refreshing to read these pages that are so undeniably a portrayal of human nature without the fuzz, diamonds or fancy emotional outbursts. I especially appreciated the main character of the book: Isak. While the world around him evolves and people are furiously building a world where the farmer is out-of-date, Isak doesn't allow this to change his way of life. And has he not discovered the secret of survival, does he not have anything he would ever need right there in the woods of Norway? It becomes abundantly clear that he does, and if I ever doubted that fact, he most certainly did not.

Chris Cleave in a week

Chris Cleave

 
So I just finished two of English author Chris Cleave's books, Little Bee and Incendiary. I read them both in a week, and they were both equally captivating and memorable. Although these two novels may be a world a part in plot and characters they both represent Cleave's overwhelming ability to capture human frailty and emotional complexity and the personal contradictions any and all deal with when we are placed in situations outside of our comfort zone. They both deal with characters who makes mistakes, who deals with guilt and who tries to find their footing in a world where help and support does not always, if ever, come for free. Some of the insight into simple life that is presented though the observations of the strong female leads in both these books are far from typical, yet so true it is sometimes tempting to pretend you never read the words on the page at all.

 
In these books Cleave takes you on a journey of fear, desperation, and forced acceptance of our human flaws. Read Read Read them!! I suspect these will not be the last Cleave books to end up on my bookshelf this summer, that's for sure.

If you read only one book this year, let this be the one.

Sometimes you read books that actually opens your eyes in ways you never thought possible. Half the Sky is one of those books. The stories the authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn share in this book provides a naked view of one of the major challenges of our world today, namely the unimaginable injustice and exploitation of women.

Despite the terrible examples of womanly abuse they portray, this is not a book of victimization, this is a book of extraordinary women and of opportunity and hope. Kristof and Wudunn have not set out to write a depressing account of suffering women, but rather they exclaim: “look at all of this potential in women we are currently not utilizing". You are left with a belief in the strength of individuals and the possibility of change even by the smallest accomplishments.  I just cannot praise this book enough, I am forever grateful to Kristof and WuDunn for not only informing in an approachable way, but also providing a step-by-step guide to how anyone willing may help.

You may read more about the book at their website, here.

Bad Behavior

Mary Gaitskill's Bad Behavior: Stories, is a thrillingly disturbing short story collection of love, sex, fetishes and general bad behavior. I was first introduced to this collection through the story Secretary, and honestly, this was a classic example of me looking at something incredibly uncomfortable and disturbing an yet not being able to walk away. Ironically, the obscure fascination with these stories might be a fetish in its own right, but there's something explicitly thrilling about emotionally and physically reacting when you read, and if these stories do not induce a reaction in you than you are most certainly more battle-scared than myself. I bow my head to Gaitskill for taking on this world of manic wildness with such honesty and wit and sharing it with us.

You may need breaks, but if you can get through these it's more than worth the read - but, alas, not for the faint-hearted.

“We So Seldom Look On Love" by Barbara Gowdy

Love, Beauty and stimulating erections of dead bodies.

The short story “We so Seldom Look On Love", from the collection of the same name, is one of the most chilling and mind-blowing short-stories I've ever read. We So Seldom Look On Love is a brilliant example of how a fictional story may convey truths about humans one might not want to conceive or is simply not able to conceive through any other written or spoken form than narrative fiction. 

The story allows amazing insight into a phenomenon in a way that promotes a certain understanding and not just an explanation. We are introduced to a female necrophiliac and we receive, through her own words, her life story. Gowdy instantly places the reader in an ethical predicament by portraying a very sympathetic character that lives very far outside our social norms. Through this narrative form Gowdy manages to create a window to a world most people cannot and will not understand and forces you as a reader to look through and consider the ethical boundaries of this world. 

This is a love story, albeit not the kind we are used to, but none the less, this is a story about love to its most extreme. Gowdy manages in this story, to portray a young necrophiliac as what Aristotle once coined as the “perfect hero", being a regular, ethical person, the reader can sympathize with. The Story is a masterpiece and boy! does it challenge our moral convictions.