This is unquestionably the best fiction book I have read in recent memory. And I read a lot. Usually I have a bitter distaste for anything passive (passive main characters, passive-aggressive people). Technically I should hate this book. Because the narrator's nonchalant completely detached description of the events happening in her life should make me feel cold and distant from her. Instead, the barrage of minutiae she details on page after page after page, made me fiercely protective of her. I soon realized the passive approach was a technique that was working on me. We spend so much of our lives feeling we are in control, convincing ourselves things are not random, they can be brought about or avoided. What Helle is really saying by having events described passively, is that no matter what you think, you don't actually have as much control as you think. Things will happen to you and you can't do anything to stop them.

Through this technique I moved from sympathy to empathy to identification. Until at the end I was within there had been 100 more pages. Where was the part where it all works out? Where I get all the things she lost back?

Brilliant Brilliant book. ( )