In 2018, something happened with the authorship of Jan Grue. All reluctance to write about his own muscular disease, the fact that he was in a wheelchair, was blown away. With the book “I live a life similar to theirs”, he found a form that could accommodate this peculiar muscular experience – but also everything else he was. He called the book, for lack of a better Norwegian description, “A description of life”. In English it was interestingly simpler. When the Parkinson’s-afflicted skater Michael J. Fox paid tribute to the book, he called it what it was: a “Memoir” – and an incredibly good one. In the sequel “Hvis je faller” (2021), Grue wrote further about being a professor on his way to research leave in California, but he no longer wanted to hide the fact that he passed the security check. It looked as if he had found the perfect form for his experiences. At the same time, he had to conform to genre conventions. He couldn’t get away from his own perspective. A life similar to mine and yours In “Trial and error” he got rid of that corset. This is a novel in which, as you know, one is free to give voice and body to other characters. This time it is not about Jan, but about Magne, who also uses a wheelchair. Like Grue, Magne is a trained literary scholar, but he has not become a professor. Instead, he ends up at the reception of a hotel that has received funds for a “diversity investment”. Magne is together with Hannah, who does not have a disability. Together they have Thea, who does not have a disability. They are trapped in a toddler hell that is easy to feel in. And should they check whether the fetus is “healthy” if they are going to have another child? Lame as literature Magne has a friend called Snorre, who also uses a wheelchair. The relationship between them has a clear purpose in the novel. In their own way, they measure the big dilemma, which those with a disability cannot escape: How much space should the disability have in my life? If I am going to research literature, should my task be to tell that disability is under-communicated as a topic in the world and in literature? Magne and Snorre discuss whether they should talk about the disability, and if so, how much. If they are going to get married, should the chosen one also have a disability? Should they be activists on behalf of people who look like they do, even if they otherwise have nothing in common? These are interesting questions, but they don’t become interesting when the young men speak in artful terms: Dialogues like this lack the sense of truth and authenticity that Grue has cultivated in his memoirs. Light satire The attempt to make fun of everything that goes wrong in Norwegian society also becomes too easy when Grue writes a novel. The hotel owner with the diversity investment is certainly similar to Petter Stordalen. It is also easy to laugh at psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s therapy (at least parts of it). All these young, liberal women from Oslo’s west side who are convinced that it is possible to solve most things within capitalism, are also certainly taken at face value. Perhaps this form of satire lends itself better to a bar than to a novel? The portrait of the selfish writer father with ever-younger wives seems finished – by others – when I get it served as Grue does it here. There is gold here I could go on and on, but that would only be half the truth. Because in between everything that is jarring, sentences appear that are thought-provoking and touch the generally human nature. The case would have it that last year I read “If I fall” in parallel with reading Abid Raja’s “My fault”. Both wrote about growing up with a disability in Oslo. But here there is a class difference, I thought then. Not in the sense of quality, but sociologically. Raja describes an experience from growing up at the very bottom of the hierarchy at Sagene in Oslo. Grue writes from a middle-class perspective in the same neighbourhood, something he is very aware of, because it is representatives of the working class who help him out the door. This class consciousness lay thick on Grue when he wrote his memoirs, and he carries it with him in the story about the parents of young children, Magne and Hannah. Significant, despite the mistake All the silver spoons in the world from the father’s villa in the best Oslo northwest help very little when the TT taxi doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to. When the bus driver backs up to pull out the ramp on the bus, so that it is downright dangerous to get out with a wheelchair – there is also a clear class perspective in this. In order for Grue and others with disabilities in Norway to be able to live a life similar to the lives of everyone else, they are dependent on underpaid, overworked people who are themselves at the bottom of the social ladder. When the taxi center is outsourced to a call center in Eastern Europe, it is not easy to show care. These insights resonate with and give depth to this sentence: The utopia of a society where even those with disabilities should be able to live a fulfilling life is the basis of Jan Grue’s last books. He is not the only one who writes about this, but I think that his books have changed something. “Trial and error” is, despite all its flaws, part of this larger story. news reviewer Photo: Gyldendal Title: “Trial and error” Author: Jan Grue Genre: Novel Number of pages: 368 pages Date: 2022 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Etterliv” by Abdulrazak Gurnah or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse.
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“Trial and error” by Jan Grue – Reviews and recommendations
