Dag Solstad’s Novel 11, Book 18 draws us into the life of Bjørn Hansen with a style so closely attuned to thought it dissolves any distance: what James Wood once called “close writing.”
Hansen moves through his days almost mechanically, yet feels, intermittently, the pressure of a life he did not choose. As he says:
“If I hadn’t been here, I would’ve been somewhere else and have led the same kind of life. However, I cannot reconcile myself to that.”
There is something Sartrean in Hansen’s disquiet, the sense that “a host of little metamorphoses accumulate” until a rupture becomes inevitable. Yet even after each rupture, he remains haunted: conscious that change has occurred, but unable to change course.
A novel about the silent accumulation of unease, and what it means to live beside oneself, half-unwillingly, half-intently.
>Thanks for the link and the only thing in your review which disappoints me is that you say Novel 11, Book 18 is more successful than Shyness and Dignity – I've been saving the latter keenly, as I liked Novel 11 so much…I'm interested in your comparison with Sartre's Nausea – I haven't read any Sartre since school (Les Jeux Sont Faits) so that eluded me.
>John – There is brilliance in Shyness and Dignity, which makes it rewarding, but, for me, there are flaws that I found disappointing. Novel 11 in its execution is flawless. I am so frequently disappointed by endings. Twenty pages from the end of Novel 11 and I begun to worry, I could sense let down, but I loved how it ended: Hansen's need to be caught by the Singing Dentist is irresistible.