A sixty-nine-year-old woman has been abandoned by her husband. She is to a small extent able to settle down with being single, and thus moves out onto the sex market. She dates Erlend, but is rejected. She meets her childhood sweetheart Christian again in Berlin, but he is married. She meets Geir on Tinder, but he’s not that hot. And that’s how the days go. WENCKE MÜHLEISEN: Known as a performance artist, gender researcher and author. As a Saturday guest where she talks about the artist’s life and the new book. From Dagsrevyen 6 January 2024. In a nutshell Our female protagonist is no longer there to pick and choose on the gender market. In between her love affairs, she looks back on growing up with an older sister who was constantly tormented by her father and cohabitation with Ulf, who left her. Their adult son has left the nest. In between all this, she lives out her desire and is fulfilled by her soul’s longing. Amor Mixtus! There you have love in a nutshell. And there you have it – in short – this new novel by Wencke Mühleisen. Told with a form of free openness that is exemplary. But is this a novel? That question has come up in connection with all five books Mühleisen has written based on his own life experiences. They all have an autobiographical and fictional touch, as stated on Wikipedia. But these books are not just reflections of lived life either. Something has obviously happened to a human life when it is transformed into letters or staged. Mischievous mouth Out of this transformation of lived life into words can arise art, great art. Mühleisen lists several of those who achieve this as sources of inspiration at the back of the book (which seems to be a new trend). In this case, it’s a bit like lobster and canary. Sometimes fine, sometimes more so. When the flame of youth Christian is depicted with the “wild hair, the dark eyes I’d loved to bathe in, the mischievous mouth I could never get enough of kissing” – then we approach pure kitsch. My longing for the unsurpassed sentence, my desire for metaphors created with unsurpassed fingerspitzgefühl is thus not fully satisfied here. But when I have come to terms with the fact that I am dealing with perfectly decent table wine and not a complex Barolo, then this novel’s memoir qualities also come into view. Good company There are several nice supporting characters here. A fun-loving girlfriend appears, who thinks that the lonely single life is also going well. As long as you can now and then pay for a little massage? A memory of a party in the eighties, where the main character had worn “a loose-fitting coverall stitched together from old sweatshirts”, one would have liked to have attended. Yes, things change when Mühleisen dresses up his main character in a loose-fitting overall, sewn together from old sweatshirts. This book is really like that too. A loose-fitting overall, assembled from old sweatshirts, full of lived life. Literary critic Knut Hoem about Wencke Mühleisen’s new novel in Nyhetsmorgen. news reviews Title: “Everything I fear has already happened” Author: Wencke Mühleisen Number of pages: 192 Genre: Novel Published: 2024 Publisher: Gyldendal ISBN: 9788205599130 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“Everything I fear has already happened” by Wencke Mühleisen – Reviews and recommendations
