As I sift through my backlog, I am beginning to realise what picking up lighter books mean. There are these unique copies buried in the list, and I am unearthing them one at a time. This year my read translated works have exploded, and I have so many different languages on my list!
Reading a translated work is a two-fold experience. One is the narrative style and how the translation works, the second being the feel of experience a whole new culture. With the new normal shifting under our feet in these uncertain times, it is always good to escape to another country and time (even if that time may have been precarious in a whole other way).
In this case, we have post-war Norway and how their lives are shaping. The first chapter did not make much sense to me until I looked up the book on Goodreads to figure out that it is the first in a series. Put in that context, it made sense to begin where it did. If like me, you are reading just the first, it won't matter if it doesn't seem clear.
It is a well-written story about the intricacies of a society. We have ordinary citizens, each with their own hopes and dreams. They have their own ways of expressing themselves, which makes the writing rich and colourful. There is so much extra in the ordinary that it was a highly entertaining read. I do not want to talk of the individual characters because they are outlined and coloured in slowly and therefore should be first encountered in the book itself. I recommend it to anyone who likes reading about the supposedly mundane day-to-day lives of ordinary people.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley, the review is entirely based on my own reading experience of this book.

I really enjoyed this, such a delightful book. It opens in 1947 in post-war Oslo as Norway is emerging from wartime austerity after the German occupation. We see how the city and its inhabitants are changing and adapting to changing times. The novel centres around the Kristoffersen family, and embraces their neighbours, family, colleagues and friends as well as the wider community. The structure is unusual and very effective, as each narrative chapter is appended by notes and minutes from the meetings of the local branch of the Norwegian Red Cross and these notes give background and context to the characters’ daily lives, especially after Maj Kristoffersen starts working for the branch. The pace is slow and measured so that the reader gets a real feel for the daily round with its ups and downs, triumphs and disappointments. The Krisotoffersen family feel very real and relatable and I got completely caught up in their trajectory throughout the novel. The book is at once a snapshot of a particular place and time as well as an engaging, insightful and compassionate portrait of an “ordinary” family.

‘She just stands watching the two boys. They are still children, but the war, of which they remember barely anything and yet cannot forget, has cast a shadow over them that causes their childhood age to lose its meaning. They are already carrying the darkness of adulthood. They are children in camouflage.’

This book is the first in a trilogy (parts 2 and 3 have already been published in Norway) by acclaimed author Lars Saabye Christensen. Having previously read 3 of his works I was super-excited to get hold of this, and it certainly lives up to expectations. This is, in essence, a love letter to Oslo, its people – especially the women – and to a nation, emerging from the terrible consequences of occupation during the Second World War and a devastated economy. The novel opens in 1957 with the death of King Haakon, and then jumps back in time to 1947. The central figures of the novel are the Kristoffersen family: father Ewald, his wife Maj, and their children Jesper and Stine, who is born later in the novel. In truth, it is the area around Kirkeveien that is the main ‘character’, and the people who live and work there, from the butcher and his son, to the Kristoffersen’s upstairs neighbour, to the school teacher Lokke and the Italian immigrant Enzo. As their lives intertwine and stories develop, it is Jesper who is the one who binds them all together. He is a wonderfully created character; overly-sensitive to sounds but with a natural talent for music, he is often taken for being a bit slow, or sullen. As with much of Christensen’s novels it is a way of directing our view of events, seen through the eyes of a young(ish) child, usually a boy, which helps us to re-interpret how we, as adults, live our lives.

Interspersed with the narrative is an ongoing celebration of the work of the Red Cross in this post-war country. Minutes of meetings are given throughout, which in many ways quietly yet movingly pay tribute to the work of this extraordinary charity, but also gives a subtle insight into the lives of many people struggling to cope in these hard times. There are also, again in a quietly unforced way, genuinely funny moments as the ‘impartial’ notes give way to personal comments and opinions.

Nothing much happens, and that’s the joy of this novel. It is the small things that matter: the arrival of a telephone in the Kristoffersen’s apartment; piano lessons; selling stamps for the charity; a gentle love-affair between two widowed neighbours. There is joy and beauty in the smallest things, like a snowman in the backyard or the sound of church bells. There is a sense of the place, of the city, as there is in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, as we follow our characters down streets and hills and passed specific buildings. It is also profoundly moving, and I defy anyone to remain dry-eyed at certain moments.

Christensen is one of my favourite contemporary writers and, if this first book of the trilogy is anything to go by, this will stand as his defining work. For anyone who calls a city or a place ‘home’, you will recognise the people and the stories. The themes are universal, the stories deeply personal, and always it is written in such a lyrical prose that you can just lose yourself in the rhythm of the words:
‘Summer plunges this city even deeper between the mountain ridges while raising those people who remain after the others have gone, raising them into a majestic loneliness. Summer here isn’t a season. Summer is a moment in time.’
(And here, this is the moment to highlight the extraordinary translation by Dan Bartlett, always an excellent reader of tone and nuance in the original work.)

Glorious, epic in its attention to the small things in life, this book deserves to be read. I, for one, cannot wait for parts 2 and 3 to get an English translation.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

It took me a bit to be involved in this book as the pace is very slow but I got used to the style of writing and started savoring the descriptions and the flow of the plot.
It's not an easy read, it's a book you have to read slowly to enjoy the style of writing and the life of the different characters.
I loved how it describes Oslo, it's so good it could work as a tourist guide, and I love the characters.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Quercus Books and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

What a unique read. Echoes of he city is many things - a tale of one city, a series of stories of those who live there and a snapshot of history and human emotion.

It also works extremely well as a guide book! There’s so many mentions of street names, city landmarks and statues to note moments in history etc that you could literally walk around the city with this book in your hand and discover much more than you normally would.

The characters who live at Kirkeveien are delightful characters to meet in a novel. It’s just after WW2 and we get to meet them gradually, all of them with fascinating stories and their hopes and dreams. It’s through their stories that we really start to explore and discover the real face of Oslo as the city moves from wartime into peacetime.

This is when the structure of the book really comes into its own. It’s uniquely set out with chapters on characters interspersed with notes and minutes from the Norwegian Red Cross. This is the organization which has played a major role in the city in helping developing it and mapping it out. Through the Red Cross, we see how the city has changed, is changing now and adapting to the changing times. Then when we meet the characters again, we see how the city and the people, the people and the city live side by side, and how the stories of one intertwine with those of the other.

This really is a unique and insightful read. A novel that’s hard to categorise as it carves out its own niche. First of a trilogy that I am very much looking forward to revisiting.

This is a wonderful book, right up my street. I wondered how I would get on with it at first - so many street names, city landmarks etc in the prologue were initially offputting - but, by the end, I went back to read it again and it all fell into place in a really poignant way.

We follow the fortunes of a cast of utterly believable and engaging characters for a decade immediately after the end of WWII. I was riveted to their stories and to the story of Oslo, too, emerging from the war into peacetime. The structure of the book is key. Chapters dealing with the characters’ day-to-day lives are interspersed with short chapters taking the form of minutes of the Red Cross in the Fagerborg district of Oslo. These minutes serve to show the neighbourhood’s development over the years and also give the reader a moment to digest the action of the last ‘character’ chapter and the author the chance to move the action along without any jarring breaks. All very effective.

The writing is fluid, unpretentious and understated, conveying emotion without overplaying it. It appealed to me very much, all credit to the translator (who I’ve come across before in work by Scandinavian authors). The characters are so well drawn. I loved them all, especially the Kristoffersen family, Fru Vik and Enzo Zanetti. I am delighted to find that this is the first in a trilogy so I’ll have the opportunity to see how they make out beyond the pages of this book. I couldn’t recommend it more.

"It is a national holiday. Savour the words. They feel good. Most things are national in this post-war period, before affluence grows too much and everyone has to look after themselves and not others. Most things that happen are the same and people talk about the same. That doesn’t mean you say the same."
 
Tales of the City, translated excellently as ever by the wonderful Don Bartlett, and from Machelose's consistently strong list of world literature, was published in the Norwegian as Byens Spor: Ewald og Maj in 2017.  
 
It is the first in a planned trilogy (the second has already been published in Norwegian).   This is the 5th Lars Saaybe Christensen novel in translation that I have read, and one of the strongest of an impressive body of work.
 
The novel opens on 21 September 1957, with a beautifully drawn panoramic sweep through the Oslo of that time, before zooming in on one individual:
 
“The boy, or rather the young man, because he is in the process of becoming a man, sitting on the tram, the one you can see passing by early this morning while everyone wakes to the saddest news a grateful nation can receive, wants to leave, leave Fagerborg, leave Oslo, everything, just leave. His name is Jesper Kristoffersen and he has a bulging seaman’s kitbag beside him on the seat. Take note of his eyes if you can: vacant yet alert, he sees and is seen. Incidentally, below his left eye there is a blue shadow, a relic of the past. Once he was diagnosed as 'sensitive'"
 
The sad news is the death of the Norwegian King, Haakon VII, but for the Kristoffersen family, his mother Maj and younger sister Stine, the day is more noted for young Jesper (aged c15) leaving home and signing on for duty on a merchant ship, having been declared fit for work, and no longer sensitive. 
 
The story then returns to October 1948 and the post war City and the Fagerborg district, where Jesper is 6 years old, an only (Stine is yet to be born) and odd child, his schooling delayed a year, though of by people, including his parents Maj and Ewald, as, variously: restless, troubled, difficult, stubborn, indifferent, angry, on edge, his eyes flitting.   
 
In practice he is, as per the quote above, sensitive and particular seems to have (undiagnosed) heightened auditory sensitivity and (as yet undiscovered) musical talent: “He can break as easily as he can produce the most beautiful sounds.”
 
As this volume of the novel progresses through the next five years, the story also introduces us to the butcher’s son Jostein, who loses most of his hearing in an accident, and who Jesper befriends on their first day at school, both being outsiders; the family’s neighbour Margrethe Vik, a widow, who starts a tentative romance with Olaf Hall, a widower and antiquarian bookseller (“she is wearing a perfume he likes so much today, although nothing can compare with the aroma of books”); Enzo Zanetti, an Italian immigrant and pianist, who introduces Jesper to his calling, music; and the family physician, Doctor Lund (responsible for the two diagnoses above), and whose wife inducts Maj into the local branch of the Red Cross.
 
The unfolding years, and a picture of the post war austerity years, are very effectively evoked by the unusual device of including at frequent intervals, the minutes of this local Red Cross branch.
 
“A SHORT RESUMÉ OF OUR FIRST YEAR, 1947 
 
The Norwegian Red Cross, in order to rationalise and ease the workload, mapped out the city of Oslo and divided it into departments, each with its own board. In June 1947 a department was established in Fagerborg.”
 
And along with the standard third person narration, the novel, sometimes adopts a collective narrative voice to emphasise the social milieu, for example of those who don’t leave the city for the summer:
 
“We stayed in Oslo. No-one talks more about the weather than those left in the city. We sometimes complain and blame the Meteorological Institute, which isn’t far away, in Blindern. But when it starts to rain, which often happens in this area, no-one breaks into a run. They just continue walking at the same quiet pace, going nowhere in particular. When it stops, you notice that the buildings are a different colour and gleam in a different way.  No renovation work has been done and it is not the rain’s fault, either. It is the light breathing on the facades, especially in the evening, slowly drawing out the day. Inside the abandoned flats the furniture is covered with sheets, which soon fade and resemble yellow bandages when the residents return in August. The flats sicken at being vacated, but on days with cloudless skies, which generally come one at a time, the people left in Oslo know where they are going. To Ingierstrand Beach, Lake Sognsvann or Fornebu Airport to watch planes taking off.”
 
There are also individual moments, such as when the family’s long wait for a telephone line finally ends (in passing, I’d note that Oslo was 30 years ahead of the rural Norfolk of my childhood in that regard):
 
“The telephone rings. They both jump. Ewald steps forward, hesitates, carefully lifts the receiver from the cradle and says in a tremulous voice: “This is the Kristoffersen household, hello.” 
He hears a woman speaking fast.
“Ewald Kristoffersen, date of birth September 4th, 1911?”
“That is indeed the person you are talking to at this moment.”
“This is the telephone switchboard. You’re registered. Thank you.” 
The conversation is broken and Ewald carefully replaces the receiver. He thinks: I exist. They exist. We exist. 
“Who was that?” Jesper asks. 
Ewald turns to him, running the back of his hand across his eyes.
“That was the world.””
 
ThIs volume ends in April 1951 with in that wider world, Red Cross aid being sent to war struck Korea, but also on a melancholy personal note for various of the characters.  Maj watches her son and his friend playing:
 
“They are still children, but the war, of which they remember barely anything and yet cannot forget, has cast a shadow over them that causes their childhood age to lose its meaning. They are already carrying the darkness of adulthood. They are children in camouflage.”
 
I eagerly await the translation of the 2nd volume apparently set in 1956-7 and subtitled Maj (which arguably should come with a spoiler alert, albeit one hinted at in the opening pages of this book).
 
Overall a nicely crafted story.  Perhaps lacking the black humour and sheer crazy invention of The Half Brother but, particularly I suspect when read as the trilogy it will eventually be, as impressive in scope.   Recommended and one to watch for the 2020 International Booker Prize.  4 stars