A review by lokster71
The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse
4.0
As usual I have never read any Jon Fosse. He's a Norwegian writer who writes poetry, plays and novels. This is the first book of his I've read. I'm reading it because I reviewing the International Booker Prize Shortlist and the third volume of this Septology, containing books VI and VII, is on that list. But I felt I had to read the first two volumes first.
This is a difficult book to read. It has no full stops. It's is page after page of solid text. Sentences laid on the page like walls of laid from word bricks. Our narrator, a painter called Asle, gives us his thoughts in a repetitive and broken manner and to add to the confusion there is another Asle. Also a painter. I'm not yet clear whether Asle's I and II are the same Asle or are they doppelgangers. The same Asle's but from alternative timelines. So our narrators flows into Asle and then Asle and he goes back and forth in time too, which adds to the confusion. Especially if you let your attention drift. Oh, and his late wife is call Alse.
I thought initially I was going to hate it but somewhere I started to feel myself drawn in. Perhaps the repetitious prose became hypnotic. Perhaps the repetition of the word 'think' got me thinking. But I was drawn in. By Asle's story, by his thoughts on grief, on art and on God. Fosse himself converted to Catholicism and Asle is a Catholic. How much of Asle is Fosse I don't know, but these things often seem more than coincidental.
Asle's views of what God is and how that is tied into how he sees his painting is fascinating. The main plot seems to take over a single day but the time line merges and twists back on itself. There's also a handful of other characters that Asle introduces us to. Some of whom might be other people. Or people he's met before. I wonder if any of this will become clearer over the course of the seven books.
I don't know though if this is a book I would recommend because I can imagine this is a book that would get DNFed a lot. It requires patience I think. I think my reading of Proust has helped me get used to a kind of stream of consciousness prose so after a little readjustment I got back into the swing of things.
I'm really interested to see how Fosse takes this in the other books.
This is a difficult book to read. It has no full stops. It's is page after page of solid text. Sentences laid on the page like walls of laid from word bricks. Our narrator, a painter called Asle, gives us his thoughts in a repetitive and broken manner and to add to the confusion there is another Asle. Also a painter. I'm not yet clear whether Asle's I and II are the same Asle or are they doppelgangers. The same Asle's but from alternative timelines. So our narrators flows into Asle and then Asle and he goes back and forth in time too, which adds to the confusion. Especially if you let your attention drift. Oh, and his late wife is call Alse.
I thought initially I was going to hate it but somewhere I started to feel myself drawn in. Perhaps the repetitious prose became hypnotic. Perhaps the repetition of the word 'think' got me thinking. But I was drawn in. By Asle's story, by his thoughts on grief, on art and on God. Fosse himself converted to Catholicism and Asle is a Catholic. How much of Asle is Fosse I don't know, but these things often seem more than coincidental.
Asle's views of what God is and how that is tied into how he sees his painting is fascinating. The main plot seems to take over a single day but the time line merges and twists back on itself. There's also a handful of other characters that Asle introduces us to. Some of whom might be other people. Or people he's met before. I wonder if any of this will become clearer over the course of the seven books.
I don't know though if this is a book I would recommend because I can imagine this is a book that would get DNFed a lot. It requires patience I think. I think my reading of Proust has helped me get used to a kind of stream of consciousness prose so after a little readjustment I got back into the swing of things.
I'm really interested to see how Fosse takes this in the other books.