“Morning and Evening” – Jon Fosse (translated by Damion Searls, narrated by Kare Conradi)

Normally I’d put a quote here, but Fosse’s style and the fact that this is an audiobook make that a bit tricky. Still thanking @netgalley and @dreamscape_media for my copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

At a surface level, there isn’t much to this book – we are witness to a man’s first day on Earth, and we watch him on his final day, privy to glimpses of the life in between. The man, Johannes, has had a normal life, and it is Fosse’s talent to bring out a huge amount of poignancy through his meanderings on a seemingly normal day, though one where he can’t quite shake off growing unease and discomfort that something isn’t quite right.

I’m not sure if it was the style of the book, the constant repetition and flowing sentences with minimal punctuation, or my circumstances when I was listening to this (on a mountain hike) but I absolutely loved listening to this. The style became almost hypnotic in its beauty, the sonorous narration and flow washing over me, and I became very emotional by the end, fully immersed in Johannes’s life and that of those around him. I don’t know if I would have had the same feeling reading it, but for a relatively short book (less than 3 hours of audio), I was completely hooked, and it put me firmly on course to seek out more of Fosse’s work. I have Septology, but the sheer size of it is intimidating me…

If you haven’t read any Fosse yet, judging from this experience, I’d highly recommend him. I truly loved the experience of listening to this, and I really hope more people experience it. 5 star listen.

If you’ve read more Fosse, any recommendations as to what I should read next?

I was wondering whether or not Jon Fosse would work on audio and I am glad to report that it does. The endless meandering sentences flow very naturally, which you notice when reading but even more when listening.

This short work reminded me very much of 'A Shining' that I read earlier this year (and much less of Melancholy). Morning and Evening stand for birth and dead. In the opening scene Johannes is born and in the closing chapters he is an old man who wakes up, feeling disoriented, realising things are off. It is quite clear that he has died, but he does not realise it yet. Outside, his best friend, who died years earlier, is waiting for him.

I appreciated the consoling tone and found the way Fosse imagines the afterlife beautiful.

4.25⭐
I feel that sometimes when a book is translated from the original language, it can lose some of the emotion/meaning in the story. However, that is not the case with this book.
I really enjoyed listening to it. The narrator was fabulous and the story was beautiful.

A great introduction to Jon Fosse's lyrical repetition and themes, if you're thinking about reading from the newest
Nobel laureate.
I kept comparing pages of the original text to the audiobook, and I really enjoyed the translation.

Nobel Prize-winning authors are usually not my thing. Most of the time I can't fully appreciate the literary value of their work. This novel of Fosse's was an exception though.

I'm glad to have listened to the audiobook which took hardly three hours. Kare Conradi's narration is one of the reasons I enjoyed this more than I had expected. Both the writing style and the topic make this a challenging read, but with his narration Conradi interprets the story with great competence and care.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for an Advance Review Copy.

Morning and Evening written by Jon Fosse translated by Damion Searls and narrated by Kare Conradi was the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in 2023 and was translated from teh original Norwegian in 2015

Kare Conradi has achieved what would seem an insurmountable task for a narrator and he does it with strong articulation, emotive vocalisation and downright talent. As a narrator, I canattest to how punctuation enables the script to be annotated much like a music score, but what to do when the author completely changes the rules and creates a new type of pace and lyricism? You make it work and Kare Conradi made it work and made it work to an epic level. I cannot even give this performance 5 stars as it supercedes that by far so I will just say I was left without words. Blinding

So if the narration is that good, what about the book? It is simply incredible, innovative but immersed deeply in tradition, an exploration of life and death from different perspectives, written with a high level of intensity due to the restructuring of punctuation and language and this is not about the translation, this is howit was written and the translation is perfection, retaining the depth of the narrative and not detracting from it

The book is written in two parts, life and death, birth to passing and it is absolutely incredible. Whether print or audiobook, this is a book that exemplifies the concept of reading as an experience and with leave you breathless and wondering what just hit you. Incredible

Thank you to Netgalley, Dreamscape Media, the author Jon Fosse, the translator Damian Searls and the narrator Kare Conradi for this mindblowing ALC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own