This Should Be Written in the Present Tense
-
-
1.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Capturing what it feels like to be twenty-something and already disappearing, not with a bang, but with a slow exhale, This Should Be Written in the Present Tense reveals the particular paralysis of a young woman who can see her life clearly and still cannot move
Dorte is twenty-something, living in a suburb she didn't choose, with a man she may not love, doing work that means nothing to her. On the surface, everything is fine. Beneath it, something is slipping away, slowly, quietly, like a life half-lived. She remembers her ex, Per—the first boyfriend she tells us about, and the first she leaves—as she enters a new world of transient relationships, random sexual experiences, and awkward attempts to write.
This Should Be Written in the Present Tense is a novel of extraordinary restraint and startling emotional power. In Helle Helle's hands, the smallest moments—a cup of coffee, a walk to the shop, a conversation that trails off—carry the weight of a whole reckoning. She dropped out. Moved away. Settled. But settling, it turns out, is its own kind of slow collapse.
For readers of Tove Ditlevsen and Jenny Offill, this is Scandinavian literary fiction at its most quietly devastating, proof that you don't need drama to break a reader's heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first novel to be translated into English, Danish novelist Helle introduces new readers to her strikingly spare and introspective style. Twenty-one-year-old Dorte has just settled into a small bungalow near a railway station in the small town of Glums outside Copenhagen. There she struggles to find purpose (and a good night's sleep) while simultaneously reminiscing about her first failed love affair and connecting with those who wander into her new life. Dorte pretends to be a student at Copenhagen University to appease her family, but her aspirations are centered on a vague impression that she should be writing something, even if she's unsure what form it should take. Helle effectively captures the inner life of a lonely and newly independent young woman whose inner aimlessness may be at odds with the ambition of those around her, and who is just beginning to understand the nature of regret. Little actually happens in this slim novel, but the reader comes away with the impression that the short time Dorte spends in her bungalow will nevertheless serve as the foundation for much of her adult life.
