Literature and Fiction2014 · 232 pp
Welcome to Us
Eivind Hofstad Evjemo
How to grieve, and to go on living in the shadow of an even greater grief?In Eivind Hofstad Evjemo's new novel we meet a married couple,Arild and Sella, who are trying, each in their own way, to come to terms with the loss of their son Kim, whom they adopted from the Philippines. We follow Sella in particular, who feels that she and Kim were not as close as they might have been, and goes back over her memories in search of some explanation of why he left them.We learn that Kim died as a result of a ferry capsizing while in the Philippines, where perhaps he had been hoping to track Down his biological mother. The accident happened over ten years ago, but the terrorist attack on the government buildings in Oslo and on Utøya of July 22nd, 2011 brings their own tragedy back to them, and to Sella in particular. A couple living in the sameneighbourhood lost a daughter on Utøya, and Sella becomes almost obsessed with the thought of how this couple manage to articulate their loss, create new perspectives for their lives, and come to terms with something so unspeakable. She plans to bake something for them, because that's the kind of thing people do. But over and over again she abandons the idea and instead she observes them as closely as she can.Eivind Hofstad Evjemo is a writer who needs nothing more than ordinary people in order to see deeply into life and open up wide perspectives to reflection, and he does so with a language that is uniquely precise and poetic. In his previous novel,Det siste du skal se er et ansikt av kjærlighet, he described almost a whole community in welfare-state Norway, and all the various fates that go to keeping its wheels in motion. In this novel it is as though he has zoomed in to focus on just a few of these fates, and managed to extract from within them an even larger humanity. Following Sella as she tries to get to grips with the real nature of her relationship with Kim, and the way in which she understands her own inadequacies, makes for powerful and rewarding reading.
Foreign rights sold: German world rights (Luftschacht Verlag, Wien)
‘Evjemo’s writing is brilliant, unpretentious, precise and nuanced. He describes the space between people. The distance. The silent sorrow. The loneliness. The despair. And he has the unique ability to do this subtly, using props with which we are all familiar ... But he also writes about love, unity and a sense of belonging. It's real. It’s important. And it is penned by an author who would appear to be one of the best that Norwegian contemporary literature has to offer.’ADRESSEAVISEN
‘Everything that was unclear or completely overlooked before is suddenly laid out. Details that you didn’t notice before suddenly become not only visible, but charged with meaning ... He has a unique way of looking at the everyday occurrences, practical details and past events that dominate our lives.’DAGENS NÆRINGSLIV
‘Velkommen til oss doesn’t have any dramatic twists and turns, clichés or caricatures. This is an unassuming novel about loss and grief, and a novel which could easily be read more than once.’KK ‘One seldom encounters such accomplished writing. Every sentence vibrates with aesthetic delight and existential solemnity.’BERGENS TIDENDE
‘Evjemo has made several successful attempts to counteract everyday triviality with compositional originality. He writes lyrical, thoughtful passages and allows his characters to enter a monastery or be part of a tragicomic amateur theatre production without giving into the temptation to make fun.’DAGBLADET
‘The sorrow is well presented from a clever perspective, and there is not a line too many.’TRØNDER-AVISA ‘I am a great admirer of Evjemo’s empathetic and cinematic bird’s-eye view and I hope that he goes on to write many more books.’VG ‘... a considerate and precautionary depiction of people burdened by sorrow, a sorrow that, if it does not completely paralyse them, will change the way in which they relate to each other and themselves. Based on the traumatic events of 22 July on Utøya and in the centre of Oslo, Hofstad Evjemo paints a gentle and sensitive picture of what the trauma that we all feel to varying degrees has done to a few individuals and families – those closest to the victims. He does this indirectly and with the greatest discretion.’STAVANGER AFTENBLAD ‘... Evjemo is careful with such opportunities, and the result is a sober text, cleverly written in pure style by an author who is able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and see things from their usually so inaccessible perspective, and he is successful in this without resorting to shortcuts, constructions or flirting with the reader.’DAG OG TID
