Many Happy Returns
By Maria Horvei
It was early on the morning of 17 May, precisely 186 years after a young, hungover poet had stirred up a crowd consisting of around five thousand supporters with his powerful…
Description
It was early on the morning of 17 May, precisely 186 years after a young, hungover poet had stirred up a crowd consisting of around five thousand supporters with his powerful words about community spirit during the unveiling of the monument to MP Christian Krohg. The monument endured, but the community spirit fell upon hard times. Light dawns in the village on Norway’s national day. Flags are hoisted, shirts ironed. The lilac trees are on the brink of blossoming and the sky is turning as blue as a budgerigar. People stream out of their houses, each and every one of them in the mood to celebrate. One has returned to the home village to hold a speech, one has steeled themselves for the duties that accompany their position as chair of the 17 May committee. Another is preparing to travel far away, and yet another is trying to rediscover a place to which he has never really belonged.Many Happy Returns is a story about national pride and the lack thereof, and about the urge to belong – somewhere or other.
Product information
Publication year2022
Pages192
Praise
Horvei is pointed in her descriptions of both city and country people. They are all funny, delightful and loving in their own way. They’re all yearning for community, but all have clear ideas about what that community might be. ... Although Horvei lets her characters wrestle with the traditional trivialities of Norway’s national day, through the book’s rounded character portraits and through the casual, often humorous way they deal with life’s torments, it succeeds in saying something about the country. ... When the flag is lowered towards the end of the novel, the teacher loosens her bunad, the author jumps into the water, and the Bergen railway line takes the city folk home again. They count themselves lucky that it’ll be a whole year until next time, while for this reader it’s been a good party.
Tora Sanden Døskeland, Klassekampen
