Naïve. Super

These kinds of novels with a childlike, naive narrator seem to be becoming more popular; or, perhaps, I am on a streak, having recently read Matt Haig's "The Humans" and Fredrik Backman's "A Man Called Ove." I find it a bit tiresome. It reads like a literary exercise, an excuse for the author to dispense "wisdom" without actually having any. This book is particularly bad, lacking redeeming qualities like an original premise (e.g., math and aliens in "The Humans") or an interesting character (Ove). I don't usually complain about this, but the narrator's dilemmas also reek of privilege. Forgettable.

I’m curious, did you hear about this book from 1996, in the same way I did? That would have been in the political coverage of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Seems that Mayor Pete found the book while at Harvard, and when he discovered that the Norwegian author, Erlend Loe, didn’t have any other works that had been translated, he learned Norwegian. Mayor Pete was certainly an original politician in many ways.
Curiosity of discovery aside, this slim paperback is one very clever and original coming-of-age novel. The style is simple and tells of a young man who has dropped out of a MA program, isn’t working, has no obvious ambition, and is house sitting for his brother. He does have a compunction to make lists of all sorts of show more things, and to bounce a red ball off the wall for hours at a time. Oh, and he finds great comfort in one of the kids toys where you hammer the pegs through the bench, and then flip it over and pound them all right back. The simple things can many times be the most rewarding.
As little is expected of him, he does the simple things that bring him pleasure, the things that he can control, while all the major decisions of his life are currently over the horizon of this temporary phase of his life. He knows that they will come his way eventually, but he’s into the uncomplicated pleasures of life—while he can. [I can strongly relate to this situation, at his point in my own life.]
The writing reflects the simplicity of his life, as well as the self-controlled nature of his days. Many lives get complicated at this point—when one knows that the major decisions of life won’t be leaving you alone much longer. Many times those complications are drugs and other addictions. Another way is when someone start making a few or many of the myriad of self-destructive choices possible in life.
There are hoards of coming-of-age novels, stories in which characters feel that the time has come when they must grow up, must make all those major life decisions. However, just maybe, this stellar and slender novel is a grand example of the time in life before all that happens. Or, on the other hand, it may be not be showing what precedes, but what can supersede all that.
No matter how closely you feel to the life depicted within this story, this extremely funny and insightful book was a real treat to read and to relate to, and it is wonderfully original and fresh. show less

If you are or have been a twenty-something that's a bit lost, this book will appeal to you. If you're not, it will still appeal because of its charm.

It's written with so much simplicity but such depth and it seems impossible to cover so many themes and subjects in such a short book, but it's done with such elegance and always hits the nail on the head.

I've never read a book like it.

What a satisfying read. Nothing happens, in the most fascinating way imaginable. Just as I wrote that last sentence I remembered the feeling of watching My Dinner with Andre for the first time. This novel gave me a similar feeling--happy to be alive, happy to be literate, happy to have time to read and to think. It's that kind of book.

Of course, this is the sort of novel that could only happen in a relatively benign place like Norway where a grown man playing with a little boy doesn’t inspire the need in every passerby to call Chris Hansen, and to a person who has a brother with an empty apartment. The protagonist is the most earnest character an American like me can possibly hope to read. With so many novels so sickeningly drenched in irony, the protagonist in Naïve. Super is completely devoid of it. And because he is not self-referentially hip in his depression and his attempts to make meaning of his world, it is tempting to write him off as simple, possibly stupid. It means something when, confronted with earnestness and a complete lack of irony, it is tempting show more to dismiss it as lacking intellect. I’m too tired to discuss what that means, but believe me when I say the protagonist is not mentally retarded or otherwise lacking in intellect. He’s just finding himself in a manner that does not involve utter self-destruction and the delivery of oh-so-clever one-liners. That having been said, in the midst of such simplicity, this is a deeply funny book.

The protagonist begins the novel explaining that he has two friends, one good and one bad, and his brother, who is less friendly than him, but a good guy nonetheless. One has to agree that his brother is a good man, because he permits his 25-year-old brother, a man who rather enjoys spending hours playing with Brio toys and making seemingly pointless lists, stay in his apartment in exchange for just giving him his messages. When his brother returns from his trip, he realizes the protagonist is having a gentle nervous breakdown combined with a mild existential crisis, and cares for the protagonist, including taking him on a trip to New York. Perhaps the brother senses that brutally beating the protagonist at croquet was what initially made the protagonist feel like there was no purpose to life. Even so, it’s hard to fault the brother. People who need a villain in a book will not like Naïve. Super because this is a novel filled with nice people. Nice, quirky and not entirely familiar people, but nice people nonetheless. You can read my entire review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/naive-super-by-erlend-loe/ show less

Ich habe nicht das Buch gelesen, sondern die komplette Lesung als Audiobuch gehört.
Dem Buch habe ich 4 Sterne vergeben, obwohl es mir weniger gefallen hat. Das ausschlaggebende dafür war die tolle Leistung des Sprechers Andreas Fröhlich (Die Drei ???).

Das Buch an sich fand ich eher fad. Der Titel sagt ja schon viel aus, aber trotzdem habe ich mich zwischendurch gefragt, wie alt denn nun der Protagonist wirklich ist, denn sein Verhalten ähnelte mehr dem eines kleinen Schuljungen, als dem eines Erwachsenen, der studiert hat. Eine gewisse Naivität ist ja durchaus eine gute Sache, aber in den meisten Teilen war es mir leider etwas zu viel.

Die Listen, die der Protagonist angefertigt hat, waren interessant und regten zum denken an aber show more leider haben auch sie nicht dafür sorgen können, dass mich das Buch wirklich interessiert hätte.
Es war schön, der Stimme des Sprechers zu folgen, aber schon etwas seltsam, als der Ton plötzlich aus war und ich mich fragte, ob mein Gerät abgestürzt ist oder es das wirklich schon war mit dem Buch. show less

This is one of those slightly off the wall books I would probably never have found if I didn’t go poking around in second hand shops. In it, the unnamed (aren’t they all nowadays?) narrator tells of a mini-breakdown in his life which caused him to question just about everything in his life and, in particular, the nature of time.

He drops out of university, spends ages throwing a football against the wall, and plays games with the five year old next door. The parents of the said five year old agree to leave the child in his care for the day, despite discovering that he (the narrator) has spent the previous day playing with a child's hammer and peg board. Bizarre. Next thing, they are racing up and down the road in a Volvo. It's a sort show more of random stream of thoughts and events, some of which had me nodding and thinking 'yes, I often feel like that too', and others which made me want to give him a kick in the pants and tell him to pull himself together.

Despite its weighty topics, this book is very easy to read and is the sort of thing you could whizz through in a day. The chapters are short, there are frequent lists, and towards the end there are whole pages devoted to a visual joke which probably works better in the original Norwegian and which I skimmed over in less than ten seconds.

This was an enjoyable read inasmuch as it represented something different from the norm: a trip along a literary back-alley. A world view filtered through unfamiliar eyes with some fascinating facts thrown in. On the other hand I would have preferred it to last a little longer and to provide something more substantial to chew on show less