Mirror, Shoulder, Signal

April 1, 2018
In this tautly observed novel, Nors reveals a middle-age woman on the verge of disappearance and discovery.Danish writer Nors is a miniaturist; her book So Much for That Winter (2016) gathers two novellas that read like collections of epigrams, while her story collection Karate Chop (2014) brings together 15 microfictions, each imbued with an uneasy sense of loss. In this, the first of her four novels to be translated into English, she follows up on and enlarges these concerns. The story of Sonja, 40-something, a translator of Swedish crime fiction, the book unfolds in and around Copenhagen, but its true territory is the inner life. Sonja is stuck: bored of translation work, envious (but not really) of her sister who appears to have it all. She is learning to drive--the title is a reference to her instructor's admonition about changing lanes in traffic--and she also suffers from positional vertigo, an inherited condition in which she can fall prey to dizziness simply by the wrong movement of her head. In part, all this is metaphor, a way to frame Sonja's displacement. She is anonymous, much like the women Nors describes in her essay "On the Invisibility of Middle-Aged Women" (2016). At the same time, Nors is after something bigger than mere symbol; she is trying to excavate the pattern of a life. "But it doesn't matter," Sonja says late in the novel. "I manage, of course." The line, in many ways, is key to the novel, which makes vivid drama out of the most mundane events. Not much happens here--some awkward interactions with her driving teachers, a couple of massages, some letters and phone calls with her family--but not much has to, for the drama Nors excavates is the most human one. What does it mean to keep on living? What does it mean to make a place for oneself, no matter how small or conditional? "A person who has her hand on the back of your heart," Sonja reminds us, "shouldn't be unsure."Nors is an exquisitely precise writer, and in rendering her heroine's small disruptions and, yes, victories, she is writing for, and of, every one of us.

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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.