Narrative Non-fiction / Self Help · Hardback

Else sees a shrink

Norwegian title: Else går til psykolog

Else Kåss Furuseth

One day, Else Kåss Furuseth receives a phone call from her grandmother. Else's brother Lars Kristian hasn't come for supper. As he always does. At the door to his flat, Else finds a pile of newspapers. No response from inside. She calls the police and tells them that her brother is dead. Her Condolances is based on Else Kåss Furuseth's take on one of the great taboos of our time: suicide. Against the odds, her approach made the performance an amusing and touching experience, a tale of a moving, timeless act and a blackly humorous exploration of our relationship to death. In It is the smart ones who die, Kåss Furuseth investigates more deeply the mystery surrounding her brother Lars Kristian. Why did he make these decisions? A diary note for the day after his self-inflicted death shows that he had planned to spend seven hours watching a film about the extermination of the Jews. A few days after Lars Kristian's death, Else said to her father: “If I knew I had to watch that documentary, I‘d have killed myself, too.” Smiling, her father replied: “Me too. But you mustn't say this to anyone else. It's the kind of joke no one gets, except the two of us.”