Helle Helle

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 show more 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. show less

a stream of consciousness style writing that, despite the disjointed lack of plot does manage to evoke a certain sense of place and character that end up telling quite an engaging story.
Very like early Dorrit Willumsen.

Helles romaner har en næsten hypnotiserende kraft. Man læser og læser, keder sig lidt undervejs, men holder alligevel fast, læser videre og pludselig knipser hun med fingrene og så er det hele slut, og der er egentlig ikke sket det store og så alligevel er der. Sådan er det også her. Og om ikke andet har man haft muligheden for at studere en forfatter, der skriver nogle helt fantastisk rammende og troværdige dialoger.

Den hedder faktisk “Rester”. Helle Helle skriver utrolig nøgternt om hverdagen. Den føles så dansk denne bog. I samtalerne, i emnerne i hver lille fortælling. Meget let læseligt og der er altid noget underspillet og en åben slutning. I like