FRIENDSHIP

Set in post-war Oslo and following on from Echoes of a City by an author who understands the city like no other.One of Norway's finest writers GUARDIANProfoundly resonant TLS In Kirkeveien Oslo in the year 1956 forty-year-old Maj is worn down by being a homemaker and widowed mother. To the indignation of the Red Cross ladies she cautiously frees herself from the role she has otherwise fulfilled to the letter. She finds a job that she turns out to be more than good at and some kind of love too. Her friend Margrethe is sick of her marriage to the antiquarian bookseller Olaf Hall but cannot think of divorce. Jesper gets a girlfriend who opens the door to a new more liberated environment of vegetarianism and politics. And his best friend Jostein realises that his talent for making money will allow him access to a world that is larger and richer than that of the Oslo slaughterhouse.Friendship is a beautifully orchestrated story about people and their dreams about social conventions personal constraints and what it takes to have the courage to realise oneself. In this book brimming with human insight as in Echoes of the City in each of these characters we recognise something of ourselves.