Review by New York Times Review
Americans who regard with bafflement what's often called "Trump country" (especially the women therein) will find illumination in "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal." Nors's exquisite novel takes up a fistful of modern conundrums, among them the urban-rural divide, the commodification of intimacy in late capitalism and what Nors calls, in a shrewd essay published last year on LitHub, "The Invisibility of Middle-Aged Women." Sonja is a childless 40-something translator of misogynistic thrillers devoured by her Danish countrymen. She longs for her home in rural Jutland, a rustic landscape of sold-off farms, aggressive drivers, rye fields and what's left of Denmark's natural sublime. Cosmopolitan Copenhagen once offered Sonja cultural refuge, but now "the parties have turned into receptions." Fleeing a meditation retreat in a deer park hosted by her New Age masseuse, Sonja realizes that paid touch and urban simulacra of wilderness have worn thin. As with the best books, plot summary fails to bottle the lightning of "Mirror, Shoulder, Signal." Despite chronic vertigo inherited from her mother, Sonja wants to learn to drive, and most of the external friction of this novel stems from her decision to register a formal complaint about her ineffectual driving-school instructor. The mind is Nors's landscape, and yearning her true subject. Sonja's is an objectless yearning, deeper than nostalgia. Page after addictive page, Nors pushes Sonja beyond her class betrayal and survivor's guilt, beyond anger at her mother for encouraging her independence, into and, miraculously, out of a profound dislocation of the soul embodied by her vertigo, which bursts forth in a gorgeous, breathless finale. Nors, author of "So Much for That Winter" and "Karate Chop," lingers on Sonya's small acts of heroism: complimenting an ugly baby while its mother shops for plus-sized clothes, composing an honest letter to her housewife sister, offering a tourist directions. Nors gives the invisible woman the dignity of her artful gaze; as Sonja thinks on the masseuse's table, "It's wonderful being delved into." This triumphant novel sounds the depths of women's unseen strength in a register that reconciles enlightened feminism with working-class rage.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
All Sonja wants is to learn how to drive. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, things aren't going well. Her first instructor terrifies her, her second instructor lusts after her, and Sonja's driving skills remain shaky at best. And the rest of her life isn't going so well, either. Past 40, unmarried, and bored with her job as a translator, Sonja is beginning to fear that the things she hoped for will never come to pass. Her relationship with her sister is as strained as ever, she is often lonely, and a move from rural Denmark to Copenhagen only relocated her existing problems to a new address. Nors' slim novel, a finalist for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, allows the reader into Sonja's mind as she struggles to connect with the world around her. Though introspective, Sonja's observations about her own life are often painfully incorrect, but Nors stands back and allows Sonja to spin her wheels. Ultimately, it is her uncertainty that makes Sonja such an endearing character and gives the novel its quiet insights.--Winterroth, Amanda Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The astute and contemplative latest from Nors (So Much for That Winter) follows 40-something Sonja, a transplant to Copenhagen from rural Jutland, as she belatedly comes to terms with adulthood. It's been years since she spoke to her simpler, better-adjusted sister, Kate, and she barely makes a living translating popular Swedish crime novels. While her massage therapist Ellen considers her an "emotional tight-ass," Sonja thinks of herself as a "parasite on the colossal cadaver of Western culture." Sonja, fighting nostalgia for her childhood in the rye fields, needs a change in her life, but she can't recapture her youth without finding a way to reach out to the estranged Kate, and she can't drive home from Copenhagen without a driver's license. She undertakes driving lessons, but problems arise when they trigger her latent vertigo. Out of this subtle emotional drama, Nors brings to life Sonja's everyday trials and lacerating self-doubt, with vivid characters like the quietly judgmental Ellen; Sonja's larger-than-life driving instructor, Jytte; and the distant Kate, to whom Sonja tepidly begins to write postcards. Not a lot happens this thoughtful novel, but not a lot has to. Nors conjures a gently fraught reality in prose that evokes a life paused halfway between nostalgia for the past and hope for the future. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this tautly observed novel, Nors reveals a middle-age woman on the verge of disappearance and discovery.Danish writer Nors is a miniaturist; her book So Much for That Winter (2016) gathers two novellas that read like collections of epigrams, while her story collection Karate Chop (2014) brings together 15 microfictions, each imbued with an uneasy sense of loss. In this, the first of her four novels to be translated into English, she follows up on and enlarges these concerns. The story of Sonja, 40-something, a translator of Swedish crime fiction, the book unfolds in and around Copenhagen, but its true territory is the inner life. Sonja is stuck: bored of translation work, envious (but not really) of her sister who appears to have it all. She is learning to drivethe title is a reference to her instructor's admonition about changing lanes in trafficand she also suffers from positional vertigo, an inherited condition in which she can fall prey to dizziness simply by the wrong movement of her head. In part, all this is metaphor, a way to frame Sonja's displacement. She is anonymous, much like the women Nors describes in her essay "On the Invisibility of Middle-Aged Women" (2016). At the same time, Nors is after something bigger than mere symbol; she is trying to excavate the pattern of a life. "But it doesn't matter," Sonja says late in the novel. "I manage, of course." The line, in many ways, is key to the novel, which makes vivid drama out of the most mundane events. Not much happens heresome awkward interactions with her driving teachers, a couple of massages, some letters and phone calls with her familybut not much has to, for the drama Nors excavates is the most human one. What does it mean to keep on living? What does it mean to make a place for oneself, no matter how small or conditional? "A person who has her hand on the back of your heart," Sonja reminds us, "shouldn't be unsure."Nors is an exquisitely precise writer, and in rendering her heroine's small disruptions and, yes, victories, she is writing for, and of, every one of us. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
