T Singer

March 12, 2018
Solstad’s unusual, entertaining novel of restrained humor follows its protagonist, T Singer, over a lifetime of nonengagement. Singer is something of a Bartleby whose neuroses compel him to retreat from life, abandon his hilarious attempts to write the perfect sentence (“one fine day he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight”), and move to the small town of Notodden at age 34 to become the town librarian. The prose repeatedly swerves into digressions about minutiae—did Singer inadvertently make a fool of himself when he talked to K thinking he was talking to B? How can he not interact with library visitors who appreciate him? After a bizarre encounter with a millionaire who gives him a system for making infinite money, Singer settles into a dull marriage with Merete and helps take care of her daughter, Isabella. After the marriage ends, Singer and his stepdaughter move to Oslo and try to start over. As Solstad increases the pace and Singer shrinks more into himself, the reader begins to feel the wonder of his shaky connection with Isabella. The novel brilliantly shows the humor and pain of obsessiveness, and the anxious, analytic Singer emerges as an enduring creation.

March 15, 2018
Morose but effective character study by esteemed Norwegian novelist Solstad (Professor Anderson's Night, 2011, etc.).Singer isn't much to behold. He can't dance, can't sing, hasn't gotten very far along in his aspirations to be a writer. What's a bookish failure to do, having exhausted the possibilities of his job as a "punctual and conscientious sales clerk in the state liquor store"? Go to library school, from which Singer emerges at the age of 34 with a job in a small city in the mountainous Telemark district. He settles into a "simple, well-ordered life" that is soon disrupted by the attentions of ceramicist Merete Sæthre, who presumably settles for him in turn because there's not a huge smorgasbord of romantic possibilities for a single mother with a 2-year-old child. Solstad breaks the fourth wall to tell us that he's not going to tell us much more about Merete: "She is not the main character in this novel; it's doubtful that she could have been the main character in any novel of a certain quality." Thus, when her discontent with Singer mounts to the point of fracture, it's easy enough, one supposes, to dispose of her, leaving Singer to tend to the young daughter who's his in the eyes of the law only. Singer is, let us say, not adept at coping; as Solstad writes, it's hard to imagine that he, too, "can be the main character in any novel at all, regardless of quality." Still, after he summons up an imaginary friend upon whom to spill his grief, he manages to rise to the occasion, sort of. Suffice it to say that, as the years pass, single fatherhood doesn't do much to improve his mood.Knut Hamsun remains the king of Nordic gloom, but Solstad gives him a run for the money in a story at once traditional and postmodern.

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