Pia Juul (1962–2020)
Auteur de The Murder of Halland
A propos de l'auteur
Crédit image: By Jan Ainali
Œuvres de Pia Juul
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Juul, Pia
- Nom légal
- Juul, Pia Elisabeth
- Date de naissance
- 1962-05-30
- Date de décès
- 2020-09-30
- Sexe
- female
- Nationalité
- Denmark
- Lieu de naissance
- Korsør, Denmark
- Professions
- Poet
Writer
Translator - Organisations
- Danish Academy
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 17
- Aussi par
- 2
- Membres
- 198
- Popularité
- #110,929
- Évaluation
- 3.8
- Critiques
- 23
- ISBN
- 46
- Langues
- 8
- Favoris
- 1
Although The Murder of Halland begins with a murder—and a rather Kafkaesque scene of public proclamation of guilt thrown on to the narrator, his common-law wife, Bess—those who read this novel to find out the whos, the whats, the wheres, the whys, and the hows will be gravely disappointed. (I hesitate to even add this title to my crime/mystery shelf here.) Instead, as I said above, Juul allows the initial murder to be the impetus for what flows forth, privileging texture over anything else.
Complete with a cast of bizarre characters, and with a humor so typically Scandinavian in its dark, sardonic way, this novel slowly builds to a consideration of how well we know others (“I knew everything about Halland. He was the love of my life. Did I hate him?”), and also how well we can know ourselves in a world that makes no sense whatsoever. An example of the strange juxtapositions that take place here that make this such a phenomenal work due to how it bends across genres so seamlessly: Bess picks up a notebook to write the usual whodunit suspect list, with motives and clues pointing to them. Immediately, however, she turns the page over and begins to write a to-do list so as not to forget to go grocery shopping or to clean her house. Juul is able to place similar types of discordant juxtapositions in both stream-of-consciousness as well as more dialogic passages, so the mood—which is hard to pinpoint or signify, existing both at the level of pathos and humor, grief and giddiness—stays wonderfully fluid throughout.
Epigraphs begin each chapter and indicate both Juul’s authorial debt as well as her thematic similarity to figures as wide ranging as Christa Wolf, Robert Walser, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Anne Carson, and Eugène Ionesco. At the same time, though, her prose is so cinematic in its registers that one can’t help but think of the surreal work of directors like David Lynch, where the uncanny side of everyday life is brought to the forefront and dreams and reality are indeterminable from one another. (Although I personally think the cinematic register in The Murder of Halland owes more to feminist surreal filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel whose work also came to mind while I was reading Juul’s novel.)
A remarkable and wholly original work: here’s to assembling a team of talented translators eager to begin translating more of Juul’s work into English soon so that we can enjoy the insights and the bewildering logic upholding the world as she presents it to us—and as it quite often is in reality as well.… (plus d'informations)