The myth says that you will dream of the person you marry if you put a bouquet of seven different flowers under your pillow on Midsummer’s Eve. The joy of the summer’s brightest evening is socially conditioned: we gather by the fire, and at night we are led to the right place. But in “Blomsterkrans” the loneliness is thick and sticky. The short stories all take place at the same time and place, namely midsummer 2012 on the holiday island of Askholmen, and the young people we meet have a seriousness about them. An older sister gives her little brother strong juice, “for strong juice is more food than weak”, waiting for the father who never comes with the ferry. A little brother takes the sad big brother with him to bathe, to make him happy and normal again. Certain parties and elements are promising, other things jar and bother. Several of the short stories do not sound that good as short stories, and it strikes me that debutant Maria Olerud should perhaps have aimed for a collective novel. Several times the short story seems to be more concerned with presenting a mood than writing out a scene. FIRST BOOK: Maria Olerud (b. 1993) works as a journalist and literary critic. “Blomsterkrans” is her debut as a writer. Photo: Agnete Brun/Aschehoug The literary in a child’s voice Six of seven short stories are written from a young perspective. It offers both good and bad. In between, there is something instrumental about the use of language, that the jargon will mostly convince that it is actually a teenager speaking, something approaching the animated. Elsewhere, where the narrator’s voice belongs to children, the non-adult perspective has a literary effect. I probably think that the child’s language is more poetic, because the child is still so sheltered, but so on. Great seriousness hides in very simple formulations. Like here, after Veronika has revealed an unpleasant secret about her older sister: Young teenagers, on the other hand, are far more melodramatic – understandably, teenage life is dramatic – and then subtlety hangs in the balance. Olerud nevertheless has a couple of well-calculated words and references in the mix, such as “randoms” and pink Björn Borg boxes. It is enjoyable to read. Hear the review in Åpen Bok: Too much background In the first short story, “Sankthansnatt”, it gradually becomes quite obvious that the older sister has taken on a caring role following the mother’s death. The short story is plagued by too much clarity, and that little happens in it. Much of the text concerns the background and context of the action, without this gaining new relevance. The other weakness is that some of the situations feel a little too contrived, as if the author has imagined a clear case that she has then written out. This is revealed by the fact that information about the persons comes to light in a slightly organic way. In addition, some of the characters are quite stencil-like. For example, in the short story where the nerd girl with thin arms and legs and glasses with tape, befriends the most popular girl, who has hips and thighs and loose eyelashes and a piercing in her nose. But it is uneven, because at other times Olerud really masters the subtlety that I expect when I go to a short story. More good elements The best short story in “Blomsterkrans” is the most compressed. In “Barnevakt”, the youngest in the collection has the floor: She is waiting for her father to come home so they can go down to the bonfire on the beach. The lady, the “babysitter”, says that she should undress and go in the water dispenser to get clean, and the girl is torn between doing what she is asked, and following her mother’s instructions to only be naked in a closed room without strangers. Also, the girl plays a grotesque and sexually explicit mobile game, which brings a twisted and crazy element to this otherwise rather mild short story collection. The best short story is simply more creative than the others. “Blomsterkrans” is uneven, but has several elements that Olerud is happy to take with him further into his future projects. news reviewer: Photo: Aschehoug Title: “Blomsterkrans” Author: Maria Olerud Genre: Short story collection Number of pages: 115 Publisher: Aschehoug Publication date: 1 September 2023
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“Blomsterkrans” by Maria Olerud – Reviews and recommendations
