Under the Paving-Stones, the Beach!
By Johan Harstad
Under the Paving-Stones, the Beach! is a novel about the discovery of a paving-stone-shaped object which, when touched, is said to create the illusion of having lived an entire…
Description
Under the Paving-Stones, the Beach! is a novel about the discovery of a paving-stone-shaped object which, when touched, is said to create the illusion of having lived an entire life within seven minutes. Centered around a group of teens in Stavanger in the late nineties, taking numerous historical and geographical detours to the Soviet Union, Berlin, Warsaw, small-town Iceland, Shanghai and, last but not least, the island Tristan da Cunha in the sixties, featuring suburban youth on the hunt for the next industrial exhaust fan to warm themselves by in the evenings, Cold War spies with multiple and shifting loyalties, Zapatistas who keep things local, marijuana wholesalers of questionable mental caliber, young people in love, amateur radio dads who are all widowers, old-school and new-school sailors, Icelandic ecoterrorists, suicidal single moms, self-tormenting clinical directors, psychiatric patients (and some who probably should’ve been), an adventurous local meteorologist from Stavanger, an astrophysicist with an urgent need to explain himself about non-academic topics, and with guest appearances from figures like Andrei Tarkovsky and Erich Mielke, the novel explores the idea that time might never really have been on our side after all.
Praise
A LITERARY MASTERPIECE. An homage to the world’s raging realities and amazing opportunities.
Sindre Hovdenakk, VGUnder the Paving-Stones, the Beach! is a massive achievement from a man with an extra-ordinary knack for storytelling and an affinity both for horror movies, spy thrillers and cowboy classics. The best of the best in this enormous novel is the coming-of-age story set to Forus and Stavanger in the 90s, a heartfelt and at the same time carefree story of friendship, love and the youthful restlessness of waiting for something wonderful to happen.
Anne Cathrine Straume, NRKThis is the biggest novel of the year. A triple album of a novel, it elegantly weaves together different genres: sci-fi, spy thriller, nonfiction and coming-of-age. It all results in a tremendous read, a harrowing and highly relevant novel of our time.
Stein Roll, AdresseavisenThe novel is, as is always the case with Harstad, historically aware and retrospective, but this time – paradoxically! – it is also a celebration of lives which have never existed, at least not in the conventional sense. And one doesn’t have to be the president of the Republic of Books to buy into the insight that this massive brick of a novel of course contains: that we all already live myriads of lives, through the hours we spend reading literature.[…] In addition, few Norwegian authors write sucker-punch sentences like Harstad does; striking, insightful sentences that hide in a tangle of more ordinary turns of phrase, that echo through all of the novel’s nooks and crannies – like this shortened excerpt: “the nature of falling in love enables an almost all-encompassing clarity of vision, in the literal sense: it is as if you’ve become able to see the other person’s atoms.” When the man also flirts – and charms – with a number of different genre traits, alludes to Soviet art cinema and commercial pop hits and in addition often is funny in a way that makes one chortle to oneself, the novel must be said to be unusually forceful and vigorous.
Eirik Riis Mossefinn, Klassekampen
