Tore Renberg is not one of these authors (Ørstavik, Loe, Espedal, Fosse in part) who write the same book again and again. He simply does not have one vote. Not even one target shape. It is somewhere between the Jarle Klepp books and “Tollak to Ingeborg”. It is also far away both in time and space from there to the “Lung Flow Test”. Defense for a young woman who was suspected of infanticide”. This is a historical suspense novel with clear borrowings from the period of literary history we call the Baroque. The inspiration is the historically authentic case against the German landowner’s daughter Anna Voigt, who in the autumn of 1681 is accused of having killed her newborn child. Slow start It opens strangely slowly, with people gathering in the autopsy room around the corpse of an infant. While the child is being dissected, and the doctor draws his conclusions that the child’s lungs are not floating, the gentlemen have a polite conversation in a language that is most reminiscent of radio theater from the fifties. What is this novel trying to achieve, purely linguistically? And which of all these voices should one actually cling to? How long can you endure being in the company of people who “pout” and make eye contact with each other? Brewing for slaughter After just over a hundred pages, I’m still delirious, mentally preparing myself to slaughter Renberg’s new historical epic so that the blood spurts, like when the executioner separates the heads from the bodies of poor sinners in the marketplace in Leipzig. But then it’s as if something falls into place. It is actually happening throughout this whole city “dressing up for execution”. Leipzig’s world-famous boys’ choir, the Thomaner Choir, sings for the condemned. It becomes clear how ritualistic the punishment methods of the time were. Line breaks may appear unreasonable, but consistent! BRUTAL TIMES: In the Middle Ages, torture was a common form of punishment in many places. During row breaks, people sentenced to death were executed slowly, in a gruesome manner. Photo: Unknown artist/Public domain True story Slowly but surely, the author’s fascination with the legal system of the time, as recorded in law books and memoirs, rubs off on the reader. From the historical source material, Renberg dictates what is his foremost strength as a writer. The ability to create fear and pity for this girl who – probably – is unjustly accused of infanticide, before the narrative turns into a revenge novel, where we suffer with the father’s thirst for revenge and desperate longing for his daughter. Everything composed as elegantly as a Bach fugue. It shines from the men and women of the Enlightenment who are yet to fight a few sword blows against the darkness of the Middle Ages. But plenty of space has also been cleared for portraits of both the chef, the sharpshooter and the boy. This patient depiction of a multitude of personalities in 17th-century society is what ultimately makes the novel take shape. Not as a congealed historical smear, as I first thought, but as living, sometimes grotesque history. “The Lung Flow Test” follows in the footsteps of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” and Günter Grass’s brilliant short story “The Meeting in Telgte”. Listen to Cille Biermann interview Tore Renberg in “Open Book”: Lament To complain about life’s inherent meaninglessness and misery – that was something the baroque man could do. 17th-century man had lived through the Thirty Years’ War and seen the horrors of war at close range. In the tracks of the war machines came the poets of the time; Grimmelshausen, Simon Dach, Paul Gerhardt and not least Andreas Gryphius, and put into words what everyone knew: Life is suffering! The father’s laments over his daughter’s misfortune are written in the same tone as the baroque role models: Well sewn The laments of the past appear as potential lessons for the people of today. The war will haunt us again and again. Man must sin, be punished and hurt again and again. It is a remarkable suit Tore Renberg is wearing this time, but it is well made. Lungeflytprøven is a novel that gradually unfolds. Led by one of the country’s most virtuoso novel carpenters. news reviewer Photo: October Title: “Lungeflyteprøven” Author: Tore Renberg Category: Novel Pages: 558 Published: 25 August 2023 Publisher: Oktober 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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“The Lung Flow Test” by Tore Renberg – Reviews and recommendations
