stay with me
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A breathless, propulsive look into the caustic sides of love, from the beloved Norwegian winner of the PEN translation prize and National Book Award Finalist
“What is so impressive is Ørstavik's ability to capture — with precision, candor and, indeed, tenacity — her shifting sense of self, as the foundations on which it rests crumble with every passing moment.” — Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal
Fear is a second skin for the unnamed narrator of Hanne Ørstavik’s Stay With Me. A successful writer at 53, her father may be a frail twig, but the fear from her past, and of her father's rage, still envelopes her.
In urgent prose, the contours of her life emerge: a 12-year marriage, the death of her lover L, her troubled relationship with M — 15 years her junior and vexed with an all-too-familiar rage. We waver between our narrator’s life and the life of Judith, the protagonist of her nascent novel. Judith is a Norwegian costume designer who falls in love with Myrto, a conductor in an orchestra, who she moves with to Minneapolis. Pulled between the cities of Minneapolis, Oslo, and Milan, and the voice of Judith and her own, our narrator writes with an unparalleled emotional intimacy.
What results is the recursive voice of someone gasping for breath: Who are Pappa, and M, without their rage? Who am I, without my fear? Who am I reaching for, when I reach for Judith? With Martin Aikten’s careful translation, Hanne Ørstavik unravels the binds that fasten us to those we love — why we return despite immeasurable pain, and why we finally, justly, leave.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ørstavik (The Pastor) unspools a fascinating metafictional story of fear, love, and the desire to make art from life. The unnamed narrator, a recently widowed 50-something writer who's begun an affair with the much younger M, returns from Oslo to her childhood home, reflecting on how she grew up in a constant state of fear owing to her father's temper and her mother's desertion. She begins writing a novel, and Ørstavik seamlessly shifts from the writer's narration to her manuscript, which is centered on a similar Norwegian woman named Judith, who travels with her much younger lover, orchestra conductor Mytro, to Minneapolis. Following Mytro's unexpected death, Judith falls for a teenage organist while listening to him play in a cathedral. The narrator then travels with M to Italy, where she attends no-less enchanting concerts and takes MDMA, wondering all the while how to explain her unconventional relationship to her friends and family, even as she begins to recoil from M's frequent mood swings. She turns again to Judith, as both she and her protagonist seek to become more self-possessed, and the narrative offers searing insights on trauma and recurrence. It's an intriguing literary double act.
