If Ingmar Bergman’s films are too cheerful for you, this is just the antidote.
Norwegian novelist Solstad delivers a grim exercise in modern literary existentialism.
Bjørn Hansen is 50 as this novel opens. He had left Oslo years before for the quiet country town of Kongsberg, the hometown of his lover, Turid Lammers, for whom he abandoned his wife and child. Now, having talked his way into the job of town treasurer by virtue of a college degree, he has left Turid, too. “This was how Bjørn Hansen’s existence had shaped up. This was his life. At Kongsberg. With Turid Lammers, this woman he had to live with because he feared he would otherwise regret everything,” writes Solstad. Turid’s sin? As director of the local theater company, she allowed Bjørn to deliver a disastrous performance in a production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, a mirthless story perfectly at home in Bjørn’s sprawling library of similarly dour books: Kafka, Kierkegaard, Cela. Of The Family of Pascual Duarte, the brooding masterwork by the last writer, Bjørn intones, “Was it sombre enough? I mean, I liked the book, but did it go deeply enough, I mean deeply enough into my own existence?” Bjørn empties out his library when his forgotten son, Peter, bobs up to attend optometry school; Bjørn lets Peter stay in his home but steadily regrets the decision when he realizes Peter has no direction in life and is roundly disliked by his classmates. “Youths like Peter Korpi Hansen were ten a penny,” Bjørn grumbles. “All of them radiated the same intoxicating nonchalance, self-indulgence and idleness.” Like the similarly bookish Peter Kien of Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé, Bjørn, too, is an ostensibly influential man without purpose or power. Steered into an insurance scam by his drug-addicted doctor when he announces his intention to “actualise his No, his great Negation,” Bjørn surrenders his will as if glad to be rid of it. The philosophical implications are many, though it’s a bit of a slog through an essentially actionless plot to get at them.
If Ingmar Bergman’s films are too cheerful for you, this is just the antidote.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2826-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
IN THE NEWS
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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