[ad_1]
Crown diary
Editor:
Aschehoug
Release year:
2020
«Recognizable and exceptionally good grip.»
See all reviews
Maja Lunde has had great success with her three novels about the climate crisis. With “The Story of the Bees”, “Blue” and “Przewalski’s Horse”, he has transformed the imperceptible daily changes of nature into fascinating and magnificent stories. When I received your new book, I realized that there is no author better equipped to write about the crown crisis than Lunde.
Because, at one level or another, there is a relationship between the covid-19 pandemic and the ecological collapse on which his novels are based. It is true that the ravages of the virus are not as dramatic as the catastrophe that ends the world as we know it in his writings. However, it’s obvious to think of the crown crisis as a kind of dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. Therefore, he was extremely excited about how he would address the covid-19 pandemic.
The new normal
The book is titled “The First Days” and in a series of short diary entries, Lunde takes us from March 11 a month. I think it’s a good move. Because it is these days and weeks that have become historic. We remember where we were and what we did when they closed the country. We do not forget how we behave after the closure of schools, the ban on huts was introduced and we all started to follow the news about the number of infected and dead. But then at some point, the days began to slip past each other, new routines were established, and what used to be a state of emergency began to look like the new normal. It is precisely this period of transition, this change of opinion in our closest contemporary history, that Lunde so beautifully describes in his book.
The book begins with a great retreat to home and family. On March 11, Lunde was in a library that was suddenly closed. On the way home, she gets in touch with her siblings, her mother who will soon be 70 years old, her father who has booked a vacation trip to Greece and her extra mother. We also learn that her grandmother is in a nursing home. In the following texts we meet her husband and three children, and the protagonists of the new daily life are presented.
And it is the union with these that is at the center of the book. For those of us who have been homeschooled, it’s easy to nod in appreciation of your representations of team meetings and teaching from others. Yes, your descriptions could easily have gotten a bit boring and predictable. But in an exquisite way, it weaves surprising details, drama and humor, as for example in this funny scene from Saturday March 14:
It’s so narrow, so narrow. I go out to the terrace. Elder comes after me, standing in the doorway. Think that everything can seem so normal, I say. Listen to the blackbird, sing, as always, although everything has changed. But there are a lot of things that are normal, mom, he says, it’s not exactly like we’re going through a zombie apocalypse either, you don’t see zombies walking the streets, do you?
Even scarier
With the world present
What makes “The First Days” a book worth reading is that Lunde describes these weeks in a way that we can recognize ourselves, and that also makes us see new details and aspects. Although almost all the texts in the book take place in the home and the local environment, the world and nature are always present. As in her novels, the distinction between the private and the collective, family life, and the crisis of civilization is porous and fluid in a way that at least fascinates the reader. In case it didn’t appear in the terrace scene above, I include another scene:
“On the way home, we passed the elementary school for the two youngest. Yngstemann runs to the wall, touches it, I miss school, he says, the beautiful school. Already? I say. It has only been closed for a day. Oh, he says, it feels longer. “
In addition to portraying herself as a particular person, mother and wife, we also find the author Lunde in some of the texts. There she reflects on the relationship between her own writing and the covid-19 pandemic. That there is a relationship, it is easy to deduce from her books. But what makes her considerations really interesting is that she was working on a novel about an epidemic when the corona pandemic broke out. This raises a number of considerations as to why he cannot write more about the novel about a disease that affected a small local community in Svalbard in the year 2110.
An important contribution
Fortunately, she had almost said, the crisis in the crown is forcing her to write about something else. Because with “The first days” we have received a beautiful, important and important contribution to understand the strange weeks of March 2020.
Maja Lunde’s new novel is good news, both for the climate issue and for literature
It will be interesting to see if Lunde’s considerations on the relationship between the royal crown crisis and the fictional epidemic will leave traces in his later writings.
[ad_2]
