Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

April 23, 2018
The astute and contemplative latest from Nors (So Much for That Winter) follows 40-something Sonja, a transplant to Copenhagen from rural Jutland, as she belatedly comes to terms with adulthood. It’s been years since she spoke to her simpler, better-adjusted sister, Kate, and she barely makes a living translating popular Swedish crime novels. While her massage therapist Ellen considers her an “emotional tight-ass,” Sonja thinks of herself as a “parasite on the colossal cadaver of Western culture.” Sonja, fighting nostalgia for her childhood in the rye fields, needs a change in her life, but she can’t recapture her youth without finding a way to reach out to the estranged Kate, and she can’t drive home from Copenhagen without a driver’s license. She undertakes driving lessons, but problems arise when they trigger her latent vertigo. Out of this subtle emotional drama, Nors brings to life Sonja’s everyday trials and lacerating self-doubt, with vivid characters like the quietly judgmental Ellen; Sonja’s larger-than-life driving instructor, Jytte; and the distant Kate, to whom Sonja tepidly begins to write postcards. Not a lot happens this thoughtful novel, but not a lot has to. Nors conjures a gently fraught reality in prose that evokes a life paused halfway between nostalgia for the past and hope for the future.