“Yesterday” was published in French in 1995 and was Ágota Kristóf’s first novel after the acclaimed trilogy about the twins Lucas and Claus. “Yesterday” contains several typical Kristof features: The concentrated, easy-to-read prose combined with the dark, sinister theme. The horror of my life The novel also expresses Kristóf’s unique combination of aggression and tenderness. The aggression shows itself in the many taboos and boundary crossings that Kristof depicts, usually completely without sentimentality. The novel “Yesterday” contains, among other things, murder, suicide, incest, prostitution and excruciating experiences of loss. The tenderness shows itself in the strong longing for redemption. “Today I am again embarking on the idiotic race”, writes the narrator in the novel after having experienced a psychotic breakdown in the opening of the novel. It is Tobias speaking or Sandor as he now calls himself. After fleeing his homeland as a child, not only from war, but also from a difficult home situation, he has taken a new name. He gets up at 5 o’clock and takes the bus to the factory. There is continuous neon light and the factory management is always playing music in the background. To make the day easier, Sandor gets high on a white powder he buys from the village pharmacist. Kristóf describes Sandor’s existence with his usual clear prose: “(…) I get on the bus, I close my eyes and the whole horror of my current life flashes before my eyes.” There is not much joy in Sandor’s life. It is true that he has found a partner, but Sandor is not present in the relationship: “You choose one and settle for her.” Sandor longs for the very woman of his dreams, he calls her Line, to come from nowhere. After Sandor is summoned as an interpreter in a court case, he spends more time in a bar with several of his former compatriots. And then, out of the blue, a woman named Line appears on the bus to the factory. Mother tongue and enemy language Many of the chapters in the novel are dreamlike and poetic with, for example, talking tigers, birds falling dead from the trees and sentences like this: “Inside my head a rocky path leads to the dead bird.” But the lion’s share of the novel is concrete, hard and boringly simple. Both literary modes are well taken care of in Henninge Margrethe Solberg’s expert translation. In one of the short texts in her autobiography “The Illiterate”, Kristóf writes about how she had to learn French as an adult after fleeing Hungary to Switzerland. She describes French as an “enemy language” that killed the mother tongue. Kristóf had to work hard to acquire the language. This is the background for the precise, often short sentences. Some have compared Kristóf to Marguerite Duras, probably because of both’s ability to write good sentences. Kristóf herself says in an interview that she does not like the French author. Bag and sack The mood of life and the language in Kristóf’s prose are more similar to Samuel Beckett, who Kristof himself points to as an important source of inspiration. But Kristof’s stories are more intense. And thank goodness for that, because this drive is part of what makes Kristóf such an exciting writer. In this novel too, Kristóf both shocks and shocks the reader constantly with twists and turns in the plot. For example, when Sandor discovers who his father really is in the fourth chapter. Kristóf masters the striking single sentences and at the same time writes interesting plots. “Yesterday” is decidedly more minimalistic than the three previous Kristóf novels, but there is still a lot going on in the 123 pages. The boy who cried wolf Using up superlatives is a risk you run as a literary reviewer. Words can lose their power when it really matters. I am writing this to emphasize how good I think “Yesterday” is. I have no hesitation in placing this book on the top shelf of literature. Cappelen Damm’s Kristóf revival in Norway in recent years, first with the re-release of the twin trilogy, then with the publication of several of Kristóf’s books, is an enrichment for Norwegian literature. Hello! I am a freelancer and review books for news. If you are wondering which books I recommend you read, you can see my reviews of “Fiskehuset” by Stein Torleif Bjella, “Kveldens ubheh” by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and “Gutteboka” by Nina Brochmann and Ellen Støkken Dahl. Read more about Ágota Kristóf’s books:
ttn-69
“Yesterday” by Ágota Kristóf – Reviews and recommendations
