It opens promisingly: Tue, 17 years old, is thrown out of the dormitory in Copenhagen. It is the third time in the five months he has been in the capital. Now he almost only has what he walks and stands in. Always with his passport in his back pocket, in case he dies and needs to be identified. Inside was a small note, a testament: The last sentence, that it is good that a child can disinherit his parents, sets a tragicomic premise for the rest of the story, and draws the threads back to the previous books. Building on his own upbringing “En motte nok hav ber der” is the third and final volume in the trilogy about Tue. It brought the author The (coveted) golden laurels as the youngest award winner ever. Thomas Korsgaard (now 28) writes fresh about growing up on a farm in Jutland. The family falls apart, the money disappears, animals and land have to be sold and the enterprising boy Tue can never be safe. Korsgaard has made no secret of the fact that much of the novel’s content is based on his own experiences. He recently told news Dagsrevyen that he has put his relationship with his parents on hold. LITERARY WONDERBOY: Dagsrevyen met Thomas Korsgaard on 28 January 2024. Video: Joakim Reigstad / news Precise details I immediately liked Thomas Korsgaard’s first novel. Reading a book in which farming in a lack of money and parents in physical arguments set the framework for the characters in the novel was refreshing. One quality of the novel was Tue’s optimistic narration: childish, exposed, but at the same time concrete and curious. With suggestive storytelling talent, Thomas Korsgaard drew me into situations that can still flash in my memory, whether it was physical battles between father and mother or party participants who stole the party food that was to be served. He revealed the unpredictable and challenging everyday life that piles on top of each other, the ones that ultimately make up life itself. Complicated family relationships In book number two, Tue’s mother found a boyfriend online. Korsgaard portrays the inner life of how the relationships mess up and become unmanageable when the mother involves her eldest son in the plans for divorce – and threatens the son to tell his father that he is gay if he reveals them. The strength of this narrative is the ambivalence. Yes, they love each other and yes, they torment each other. The weakness of this last volume is that the ambivalence is gone. The family is also gone. The people Tue meets in Copenhagen are figures, cut out of cardboard. YOUNG AND PROMISING: Thomas Korsgaard was born in 1995. He has published one collection of short stories, for which he was nominated for the EU Literature Prize, and the trilogy about Tue. “One must have probably been there” is the last book in this trilogy. Photo: Joakim Reigstad / news Harselasen takes over When we meet him, Tue is sleeping – before he is discovered and thrown out – at his job at Politiken, where he is a newspaper seller. This time too, various scenes in a young man’s life are depicted. It could almost be a movie, so visual and slapstick-influenced are they. But there are also my objections to the book: It can seem as if Korsgaard has allowed himself to be carried away by his ability to entertain. We are moving away from the family conflicts and into a new social setting. In Copenhagen, the clueless Tue gets in with a work colleague and her wealthy architect mother. The tension builds around whether or not he will be discovered when he opens up to extravagant parties while the real owners are away. At this level, without any sociological or more existential perspective, the narrative holds its own throughout. – Whoever is looking for a Bourdeaux wine would rather have a lemonade, is critic Anne Cathrine Straume’s summary of Thomas Korsgaard’s new book “En motte nok hav ber der”. His weakest work It worked when Tue was a child. Now it becomes predictable, and even the many dialogues, for which Korsgaard has received much praise in Denmark, do not have the flair needed to lift the novel. Could translator Hilde Rød-Larsen tighten her grip? “One must probably have been there” is, in my opinion, the weakest volume of the trilogy. The very last chapter of the novel, where the narrator comes home rambling in the wee hours with flowers in his arms after launching his first book, is a clever move that feeds the speculation about how much of this is autobiographical. For me, the trilogy’s punchline becomes a joke that is just too witty, and which can be read as a creative paraphrase of the school-style cliché that “everyone agreed that it had been a good trip”. Tue’s other attractions as a young man and pengelen’s farm boy in the capital are quickly read. (He writes accessible, Korsgaard, he should have that.) Unfortunately, I am left with the impression that they are also described a little too quickly. “I had to get out of the village to get out of the closet”, says Korsgaard in the podcast Author interview: news reviewer Photo: Bonnier Title: “One must have probably been there” Author: Thomas Korsgaard Translator: Hilde Rød-Larsen Genre: Novel Number of pages : 238 Publisher: Bonnier Norsk Forlag
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“One would probably have been there” by Thomas Korsgaard – news Culture and entertainment
