Meter i sekundet

The Land Of Short Sentences is the third novel by best-selling Danish author, Stine Pilgaard. It is translated from Danish by Hunter Simpson. A young woman has moved with her boyfriend to the town of Velling in West Jutland, where he is teaching at the local hojskole. By the time they have been there a year, she has given birth to a son, and been encouraged by the school’s principal to participate in school activities, but finds that conversations with the locals are stilted and stall easily. Her boyfriend, who is from a small town, tells her “You think in prose, he says, but people here are more concise… Think of your interactions as a nursery rhyme, says my boyfriend, a short ritual. How’s it going, it’s going fine. What a windy day, it sure is. Looks like it’s Monday again, there’s no escaping it. I repeat the phrases slowly, like magic spells I don’t really believe in. My boyfriend advises me to repress my need for intimacy, or at least hide it a little better.” The principal gets her a job writing an advice column for the local paper: she becomes Letterbox, and replies to pleas for advice from a range of correspondents: The Scheduling Sorceress, The Youthful Elder, The Stubborn Camel, The Nitpicker’s Wife and many more . Her advice is mostly sound and insightful, if a little unusual or flippant at times, and her replies reveal little snippets about herself and her family. Her only friend seems to be Krisser, a hotel owner whom she met in her mothers’ group. Maj-Britte, the woman who runs the local daycare, seems to be more of a mother figure than a friend, and the principal tells her they are neighbours who might potentially be friends one day. With Sebastian, the husband of the ceramics teacher, she has a certain rapport: they describe themselves as “trailing spouses”. Together they compose a lejlighedssang (community song), Battle Hymn of the Trailing Spouses Protest Song. Her driving lessons reveal a singular lack of this skill, and she is passed around the instructors as they tire of, or become disillusioned by, lack of progress, until finally Parking Peter gets her to the point of gaining a license conditional on not using reverse gear. Impressed by how well he is able to communicate with all he meets, she virtually stalks documentary maker and TV celebrity, Anders Agger and convinces him to give her “conversation tempo training … Anders Agger says that if you want to get close to rural people, the focus should be on unremarkable details.” Interspersed with the first-person narrative are the letters and their replies, and verses that make up various lejlighedssang the protagonist has composed. There is some quirky humour and several good doses of wisdom, but some readers may find the lack of names a little irritating: not only is the protagonist unnamed, but her boyfriend and her baby son (literally for eighteen months!!) are unnamed, while many of the characters are afforded only a descriptor (the grocer, the principal, the neighbour) rather than a name. An original novel that loses half a star of the potential 4.5 star rating for indulging in the annoying editorial affliction of omitting quote marks for speech. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and World Editions.