https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/echoes-of-the-city-by-lars-saabye-christensen-review

One of Norway’s finest writers charts Oslo’s recovery from Nazi occupation through small personal stories

Acclaim for Lars Saabye Christensen, both in his native Norway and in translation, has ranked him alongside Karl Ove Knausgård, Jon Fosse and Hanne Ørstavik. Beatles (1984), the story of four Oslo boys united by their love for the band, established his name. The Half Brother (2001), which follows the difficult life of a man born in postwar Oslo, won him an IMPAC shortlist spot. With its tonal nuance and quietly amusing melancholy, Echoes of the City confirms him as one of Norway’s finest writers. It is a story of recovery from Nazi occupation, of a town and its people slowly emerging from the grip of postwar austerity. It considers the small, personal stories which would normally be consigned to the archive. Its characters map the city, revealing as they go the tiny decisions and turns of serendipity that determine the fate of Oslo and its individuals.

At the novel’s centre are the Kristoffersens: Ewald, an apathetic adman; loving, overstressed Maj, who becomes a treasurer for the Red Cross; and Jesper, their troubled young son, who vows “never [to] be fat” after seeing his father naked and steals the perfume he gives to his mother at Christmas, giving the money set aside to buy it to charity. These may seem like commonplace childhood antics, but they reflect the deeper-felt malaises of postwar Oslo: Jesper is a child of the late 1940s, occupied with questions of wealth, charity and fecundity. The local doctor reflects that peace makes people put on weight and become talkative and extravagant; Jesper’s fasting, silence and thriftiness reveal that the worry and discontent of the war still linger. Jesper and his generation, we realise, are at the heart of Christensen’s project.