Literature and Fiction · Hardback

The Good Person of Sandvika

Norwegian title: Det gode mennesket i Sandvika

Vigdis Hjorth

The Good Person of Sandvika is a tragic and comic novel about economy, gambling, beer, fate, and class.

She brings her laptop and sits down at the local pub in Sandvika. She orders a beer, lets the dog sleep under the table, and writes. It's quiet enough to work, but not empty. Over time she begins to recognise the regulars: the young woman who comes in with a lottery ticket every Saturday, the elderly couple who never exchange a word, the quarrelsome man with a handlebar moustache, the world-weary drunkard who ends up crying by the bar. Many of them are waiting for their monthly social security payment. The pub fills up the day the money arrives and empties again when it is all spent. But one evening something happens that turns everything upside down.

The Good Person of Sandvika is a novel about differences that aren't always visible from the outside. About drinking alone, yet in fellowship with others. About economic margins and social exclusion, and about a gradual tenderness that grows in silence.

Vigdis Hjorth writes personally about life as it is lived, with a precision and nerve that makes the ordinary extraordinary. The pub becomes a place where life stories intersect, dignity is negotiated, and the question of who people can be for each other is asked with greater importance than first assumed.

Reviews

"A beautiful little novel (…) It is a thought-provoking book by Hjorth, one that is deeply moving."

VG, six/six stars

The Good Person of Sandvika demands so much of me and touches upon so many sensitive spots. I am shaken and happy to be struck by this novel. It feels good to realize how powerfully literature can impact one, at its best.”

BOK365, six/six stars

"There can be a lot of life wisdom in a three-minute pop song, but there can certainly also be in a tightly composed and seemingly simple novel."

ADRESSEAVISEN, five/six stars

“The Good of Author of Sandvika: Amidst all the misery, Hjorth is simply fun to go to the pub with. She definitely has command of language, and a clear, easily recognizable, original voice”

DAGSAVISEN

"Compassionate with people struggling with big problems.

There is something archaic and captivating about the landscape, the station building, and the characters Hjorth evokes in her successful and unsettling modernization of Brecht."

MORGENBLADET