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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Murder of Halland (2009)di Pia Juul
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. At one point in this book, Bess, the narrator, criticizes TV murder mysteries - with their neat solutions and tidy plots, they do not reflect real life. Presumably, Bess would give her creator 5 stars as this is a crime novel(la) which raises more questions than it gets to answer. Juul is primarily interested in showing us the impact of Halland's death on the people around him, particularly Bess (his wife/partner - she's not even sure how she should describe herself). The underlying theme is that the greatest mysteries are not the trivial matters such as "who killed whom", but rather the secrets which we tend to keep from our loved ones. Told with a wry humour which works surprising well in (Martin Aitken's) translation, and punctuated with various literary quotes which provide an oblique counterpoint to the plot, this is a novel which, at its end, will leave you unsure whether to applaud it or throw the book against the wall (though this wasn't much of an option in my case since I was reading it on my tablet...) At one point in this book, Bess, the narrator, criticizes TV murder mysteries - with their neat solutions and tidy plots, they do not reflect real life. Presumably, Bess would give her creator 5 stars as this is a crime novel(la) which raises more questions than it gets to answer. Juul is primarily interested in showing us the impact of Halland's death on the people around him, particularly Bess (his wife/partner - she's not even sure how she should describe herself). The underlying theme is that the greatest mysteries are not the trivial matters such as "who killed whom", but rather the secrets which we tend to keep from our loved ones. Told with a wry humour which works surprising well in (Martin Aitken's) translation, and punctuated with various literary quotes which provide an oblique counterpoint to the plot, this is a novel which, at its end, will leave you unsure whether to applaud it or throw the book against the wall (though this wasn't much of an option in my case since I was reading it on my tablet...) Unutterably awful read, boring, pointess and 100% forgettable. The narrator is a middle aged writer, living with her second husband. There was an acrimonious split from her first, a breach in her relationship with her daughter; there are underlying issues. And then, almost immediately, her husband is shot dead. When the police barge in, stating they know she did it, we feel a murder mystery coming on. But then there's no more...she's left unhampered to carry on living her rather disturbed life. Is she a totally unreliable narrator? Did she do it? Secrets seem to come out- Halland was having affairs. (but maybe that's not true either?) Because you don't know what's happening really, the whole thing has zero interest. I needed a 2009 book for my Century of Books Reading Challenge so continued grimly on to end. Otherwise would have stopped a lot sooner. DIRE!!
Det er ikke bare dødsensalvorligt, det er også klukkende morsomt. Det er ikke bare sprogligt suverænt, det er også elementært spændende. Pia Juul skriver blændende med mundrette og bidende dialoger i mesterklasse...Ren krimikunst. En pragtfuld opvisning af, hvad litteraturen kan give os. Pia Juul tager den dorske danske kriminalgenre ved vingebenet og viser, hvad en rigtig forfatter kan få ud af et kriminalistisk plot, og hvor dybt i sindet og sproget det kan stikke...En konstant nydelse" ***** Appartiene alle Collane EditorialiPeirene Press (Small Epic: Unravelling Secrets, 8) Premi e riconoscimenti
When Halland is found murdered almost right outside his door, his widow, Bess, is of course the prime suspect. She isn't worried about that, though, but about the daughter she abandoned years ago. As the police investigate, the slightly cantankerous Bess instead follows a trail of her own regrets and misapprehensions. Atmospheric and haunted by the uncanny, The Murder of Halland is anything but your typical whodunnit. It won Denmark's most important literary prize, Den Danske Banks Litteraturpris, and its English translation was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Prize. '[Juul's] writing is sparse, ascetic, and exquisite ... a beautifully wrought narrative about reclamation, letting go, and moving on.' - Publishers Weekly 'Anything but a standard crime novel. The mystery at its heart is the mystery we are to each other.' -The Economist 'The Murder of Halland ... is cooler and more calculated than any old Killing, and wrong-foots till it reveals the real mystery.' - Ali Smith, author of How to Be Both 'Written with deft poetic precision, the compact scenes keep you turning pages breathlessly to get to the heart of the mystery and to the mystery of the narrator. The Murderof Halland is beautifully realized - an instant Nordic noir classic - and also beautifully translated by Martin Aitken.' - Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet 'Juul's novella is a spare, elegant jewel ... Terse and enigmatic, this novel is a classic to be savoured again and again.' - Maclean's Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)839.8138Literature German and related languages Other Germanic literatures Danish and Norwegian literatures Danish Danish fiction 2000–Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Although The Murder of Halland begins with a murder—and a rather Kafkaesque scene of public proclamation of guilt thrown on to the narrator, his common-law wife, Bess—those who read this novel to find out the whos, the whats, the wheres, the whys, and the hows will be gravely disappointed. (I hesitate to even add this title to my crime/mystery shelf here.) Instead, as I said above, Juul allows the initial murder to be the impetus for what flows forth, privileging texture over anything else.
Complete with a cast of bizarre characters, and with a humor so typically Scandinavian in its dark, sardonic way, this novel slowly builds to a consideration of how well we know others (“I knew everything about Halland. He was the love of my life. Did I hate him?”), and also how well we can know ourselves in a world that makes no sense whatsoever. An example of the strange juxtapositions that take place here that make this such a phenomenal work due to how it bends across genres so seamlessly: Bess picks up a notebook to write the usual whodunit suspect list, with motives and clues pointing to them. Immediately, however, she turns the page over and begins to write a to-do list so as not to forget to go grocery shopping or to clean her house. Juul is able to place similar types of discordant juxtapositions in both stream-of-consciousness as well as more dialogic passages, so the mood—which is hard to pinpoint or signify, existing both at the level of pathos and humor, grief and giddiness—stays wonderfully fluid throughout.
Epigraphs begin each chapter and indicate both Juul’s authorial debt as well as her thematic similarity to figures as wide ranging as Christa Wolf, Robert Walser, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Anne Carson, and Eugène Ionesco. At the same time, though, her prose is so cinematic in its registers that one can’t help but think of the surreal work of directors like David Lynch, where the uncanny side of everyday life is brought to the forefront and dreams and reality are indeterminable from one another. (Although I personally think the cinematic register in The Murder of Halland owes more to feminist surreal filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel whose work also came to mind while I was reading Juul’s novel.)
A remarkable and wholly original work: here’s to assembling a team of talented translators eager to begin translating more of Juul’s work into English soon so that we can enjoy the insights and the bewildering logic upholding the world as she presents it to us—and as it quite often is in reality as well. ( )