Josefine Klougart

One of Us Is Sleeping by Josefine Klougart is both wonderfully simple and heart-achingly complex. The prose, beautiful and poetic, demands a closer reading than most novels. Reading between the lines and interpreting the emotions for yourself is sometimes a struggle but one which is rewarded many times over.

These are reflections for the most part and so present a nonlinear narrative if one is looking for a novel that travels from one place to another. Perhaps a better approach is to avoid show more the traveling concept of plot and accept this as something we all do on occasion, which is spend time reflecting back and forth through time but from a stationary point in time.

This will not appeal to everyone (of course, this can be said for every book), especially those who want a plot that whisks along at a breakneck pace or explain a character's thoughts in simple non-poetic form. For those who enjoy pondering life's many twists and turns along with the protagonist, this will be a wonderful experience. Some of the passages shed new light on some of my own conflicts in life, and that is an uncommon occurrence in many novels.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads. show less

A fragmentary meditation on death and decay, Of Darkness by Josefine Klougart stretches the concept of fictional narrative to its very limits. She redefines the novel in the process. Set firmly in the tradition of the experimental novel, Klougart uses a variety of forms to investigate the dissolution of form itself. Images come and go. Storylines appear and disappear. Loved ones die. Marriages split. Seasons change, and cells die from sickness and disease. What better way to examine the show more concept of decay than to watch narrative rot, to see the inherent fragility of storytelling?

https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/darkness-0 show less

I believe that this young author from Denmark can be compared to Salman Rushdie & Marcel Proust. A new literary shining star! The plotlines of her novel include a young woman coping with the end of a love relationship at the same time as her mother is dying of cancer. She uses lush images from nature. My favorite recurrent image revolves around the apple tree in the yard of her childhood home. The structure is stream-of-consciousness like Rushdie, yet her prose is exquisitely lyrical and her show more imagery is excruciatingly melancholy with a river of life's truths running right through its center. Perhaps the finest prose since Proust! show less

"Rain" is a good title for this one, a sad story about the difficulty of overcoming the loss of a family member, how one death can change the whole world for a boy and his family.