I've truly no clear feelings about this one. Although Stig Saeterbakken alleged in the afterword that there's humor in Ulven's work, this one just felt almost entirely negative, at times just angry. And yes, that's all quite legitimate and sometimes justified—but I get the sense that to speak to the author of the possibility, much less the validity, of even a sliver of happiness, would have been sneered at as a childish delusion and/or idiotic romanticism.

I brought the book into an essay on anger and/vs comedy: https://walkingthewire.substack.com/p/to-laugh-or-to-rant

If Karl Ove Knausgaard has done nothing else for me, he's helped me find some interesting looking North European writers. The hipper hipsters probably didn't need KoK's help finding Tor Ulven, who's apparently very well respected in Norway. But this is the only work of his in English so far.

Replacement was precisely what I needed when I started to read it, so keep that in mind when considering my recommendation. But this is really freaking good, despite sounding really boring (apparently the Norwegians specialize in "sounds really boring but isn't" kind of books). To begin with, we're in the head of a lonely old man, at night, thinking about his past. Then, with no obvious signposts, we're no longer in his head, but in the head of a younger man. And so it goes for the rest of the text. Each man (all men) do something fairly unimportant, and reflect on their almost uniformly sad lives. This should be awful. It's the kind of thing I hate. But here, it works perfectly. The form is the most interesting thing going on, but there's also a surprising amount of emotional heft, as if Ulven really wanted to make sure we saw every possible minute variation of the blues: regret and nostalgia; fear of the future and delusions of grandeur based there; loneliness and agoraphobia.

Again, usually this would go straight on the trade-in pile, but Ulven (and his translator, Kerri A. Pierce) pull it off thanks to the sentences, paragraphs, and small variations. In that way, it's a bit like the minimalist-theist composers that are so popular (I mean popular among a very small group of people) right now.

But because it fit my mood just a bit too well, I'm knocking off a star. Because I'm objective like that. ( )

“There’s no point trying to tell yourself that darkness changes nothing; maybe she believes that, maybe she doesn’t, but in any case it’s wrong, because darkness happens, it fills a space, and it could also be full of something like the way a drawer is full of silverware, or the earth is full of insects that scatter in panic when you lift a rotten log, even though darkness could also be a balloon, a balloon filled with black air.”



In “Replacement” by Tor Ulven



Because of its brevity and yet countless fathoms-deep complexity coupled with what is not easy text I tend to consider “Replacement” as an example of a novel that sifts the casual reader from the committed enthusiast. In the same vein as “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad and “Wild Highway” by Bill Drummond & Mark Manning in terms of seriousness of theme in a small expertly packed parcel, but providing a rather more difficult text to engage with,“Replacement” is an significant novel on many levels.



“Replacement” carries a matching authorial mood of darkness that is perhaps the seeds of meta-fiction; you are aware that the style of the telling of the tale is intricately woven into the fabric of the tale itself. The clarity and simplicity of the authorial voices in the two books above-mentioned is not present and you, the reader, are called upon to grapple with the text as part of the experience the book is offering up. And it’s a hell of a lot shorter than “Moby Dick”.





If you’re into Mundane Fiction, read the rest of this review on my blog. ( )

I have absolutely no idea what the fuss is about this book. I gave it a good try, but I must give up. A book, for me, totally devoid of feeling. The words hollow as any I have ever read. I got nothing, nothing at all, from reading any of this. Nothing. A complete waste of time. ( )

It shows that the author was primarily a poet -- the book is rich is description of senses, feelings and memory. This is about about writing rather than narrative, and this successfully comes through in the translation. ( )