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Knots

Stories

Gunnhild Øyehaug; Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson

Picador

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ISBN10: 1250182441
ISBN13: 9781250182449

Trade Paperback

176 Pages

$18.99

CA$24.50

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First published in Norway in 2004, Knots is Gunnhild Øyehaug’s radical collection of short stories that range from the surreal to the oddly mundane, and prod the discomforts of mental, sexual, and familial bonds.

In both precise short-shorts and ruminative longer tales, Øyehaug meanders through the tangled, jinxed, and unavoidable conflicts of love and desire. From young Rimbaud’s thwarted passions to the scandalous disappearance of an entire family, these stories do the chilling work of tracing the outlines of what could have been in both the quietly morbid and the delightfully comical. A young man is born with an uncuttable umbilical cord and spends his life physically tethered to his mother; a tipsy uncle makes an uncomfortable toast with unforeseeable repercussions; and a dissatisfied deer yearns to be seen. As one character reflects, “You never know how things might turn out, you never know how anything will turn out, tomorrow the walls might fall down, the room disappear.”

Cleverly balancing the sensuous, the surreal, and the comical, Øyehaug achieves a playful familiarity with the absurd that never overreaches the needs of her stories.

Reviews

Praise for Knots

"[Øyehaug’s] work is playful, often surreal, intellectually rigorous, and brief. She sometimes resembles Lydia Davis . . . Like Davis, she moves easily from the theoretical to the humanely engaged . . . And, like Davis, she can produce stabs of emotion, unexpected ghost notes of feeling, from pieces so short and offbeat that they seem at first like aborted arias . . ."—James Wood, The New Yorker

“Formally playful, poignant, understated, and often acutely funny, Øyehaug’s English-language debut teems with humanity . . . A near-perfect collection about the knots we tie ourselves into and the countless ways we intertwine in the pursuit of sex, love, compassion, and family.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Øyehaug’s newly translated collection charts entanglements of all kinds, from difficult families and first loves to more metaphysical experiments that combine a crisp minimalism with endearingly offbeat conceits . . . [Øyehaug's] stories are as original as they are joyously delicate and tranquil."Publishers Weekly

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

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Nice and Mild


This is going to be—no, I don’t want to be categorical—this could be the start of a virtuous circle. My psychologist has told me that I need to say positive things to myself, only I don’t want to be...

About the author

Gunnhild Øyehaug; Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson

Gunnhild Øyehaug is an award-winning Norwegian poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her novel Wait, Blink was made into the acclaimed film Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts. She has also worked as a coeditor of the literary journals Vagant and Kraftsentrum. Øyehaug lives in Bergen, where she teaches creative writing.

Kari Dickson
was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and grew up bilingually. She has a BA in Scandinavian Studies and an MA in Translation. Before becoming a translator, she worked in theatre in London and Oslo. She currently also teaches in the Scandinavian department at the University of Edinburgh.

Helge Skodvin