What a guy! And what a book! The sparkling Danish coming-of-age story “If there should be a human being” has caused a furore in its home country. The first book in the trilogy is now available in Norwegian, with the subsequent volumes following close behind. The guy I’m talking about is Tue, a fresh teenager and the narrator – a boy who probably has something in common with the author himself. Tue is his sick mother’s knight and has to take on far greater care tasks at home than a boy should. He is also with his father on nightly trips to steal cables from the train tracks. Cables they can make a few pennies from by selling them on to the scrap dealer who needs the copper wires. They are in a tight spot, Tue’s family. Illness and death It opens with death. What was supposed to be a new little brother or sister never gets to see the light of day. The mother does not become herself again after the stillbirth. She spends her days with borrowed money in front of the PC screen and endless online games. Apathetic or depressed? It depends on the eyes that see. In Tue’s world, you can’t afford to be sick. There was always someone in the family who had some form of torment. Stomach ache, headache, toothache or nausea, says Tue. He and the two younger siblings have to fend for themselves. The father is mostly in the barn or out in the fields. Before the end of the novel, he has had to sell both land and livestock and take a job on the nearest mink farm. He has also been involved in physical basketball both with his wife and with his eldest son Tue. Relatives of Édouard Louis We are in Nørre Ørum in Midt-Jylland, an almost invisible spot in thickest Denmark. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to see parallels to the books of Édouard Louis, the French author who describes his own upbringing in a poor working-class environment in northern France: Korsgaard also uses experiences from his own childhood, if not as explicitly autobiographical as Louis. Korsgaard also made his debut as a 21-year-old to great interest from both critics and the public. Korsgaard also describes a gay youth who fears condemnation from his father. Where Louis elevates his private class history to a structural and sociological level, there is less analysis and more fiction with Korsgaard. A rare voice Coming-of-age novels are rare. Not quite so many depict truly poor families, but they do exist. Louis’ books are one example, the novels of Scottish Stuart Douglas another. What makes Korsgaard’s debut novel something more than one out of a dozen is Tue’s narration. His recording of the decay and the family’s rough challenges is illuminating. His voice is precise, childishly naive, but it also has a laconic maturity about it that allows dark humor to trickle in. The character drawings are motley and burlesque, from the descriptions of grandparents to neighbors and not least the school inspector, with whom Tue eventually has several meetings. Trembling scenes Almost as if in a collection of short stories, Korsgaard sets story after story from Tue’s life next to each other. Instead of one big challenge, or one dramatic arc throughout the novel, the individual scenes contribute to the whole. They stand and tremble individually, whether it’s a confirmation, a 40th birthday, a funeral or a New Year’s celebration that sparks in a direction none of the people involved had thought of in advance. Hilde Rød-Larsen’s translation into Norwegian is excellent. Only in a couple of places has the Danish way of speaking crept in, as in the expression Hold nå opp!, where in Norwegian we would rather say Hold opp! It’s a trifle. Rød-Larsen has given Tue a lovely Norwegian voice. This is also Denmark Much of the attention surrounding Korsgaard’s trilogy in Denmark is also due to the fact that he writes about an environment with such great economic challenges that many Danish readers could swear that it was not real, now in the 21st century. Here at home, Ingvild H. Rishøi and Birgit Alm have testified about poverty in Norway in a similar way. Because there is. In a major interview with A magazine recently, Korsgaard says that he believes the predominance of middle-class novels, which have dominated both Danish and Norwegian literature in recent decades, is due to the fact that it is expensive to write books. There are simply few from a non-privileged class who have the opportunity to illuminate their own everyday life in writing. That is precisely why it is nice to read Korsgaard’s story. With “If there should be a human being”, he gives voice to people who are not easily seen or heard in today’s Nordic public. news reviews Photo: Bonnier Title: “If there should be a human being” Author: Thomas Korsgaard Translator: Hilde Rød-Larsen Genre: Novel Publisher: Bonnier Pages: 292 Published: March 2023
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“If there should be a human being” by Thomas Korsgaard – Reviews and recommendations
