So Much for That Winter: Novellas (PB)

Dorthe Nors follows up her acclaimed story collection "Karate Chop" with a pair of novellas that playfully chart the aftermath of two very twenty-first-century romances. In "Days," a woman in her late thirties records her life in a series of lists, giving shape to the tumult of her days--one moment she is eating an apple, the next she is on the floor, howling like a dog. As the details accumulate, we experience with her the full range of emotions: anger, loneliness, regret, pain, and also joy, as the lists become a way to understand, connect to, and rebuild her life. In "Minna Needs Rehearsal Space", a novella told in headlines, an avant-garde musician is dumped via text message. Fleeing the indignity of the breakup and friends who flaunt their achievements in life, career, and family, Minna unfriends people on Facebook, listens to Bach, and reads Ingmar Bergman, then decamps to an island near Sweden, "well suited to mental catharsis". A cheeky nod to the listicles and bulletins we scroll through on a daily basis, "So Much for That Winter" explores how we shape and understand experience, and the disconnection and dislocation that define our twenty-first-century lives, with Nors's unique wit and humor. Review Quotes: How often can we honestly say that a book is unlike anything else? Yet here it is, unique in form and effect. "The Guardian" "["So Much For That Winter" presents] an edgy evocation of contemporary life. Nors is a creator of small spaces; her fiction is relentless, edgy, brief." "Kirkus Reviews" Minna Needs Rehearsal Space shows Nors s economy and perceptiveness. . . . The reader is treated to a cathartic and suspenseful climax." "Publishers Weekly " " So Much for That Winter" is uniquely composed, yet eminently readable. Original title: Det var så den vinter.