Book Review: "Everything Like Before" by Kjell Askildsen

In the world of post-modernist literature there are two things that could happen: the first thing is that the language and atmosphere, the chronology and the way in which the characters fit into the setting are all perfect harmony with each other and therefore, when the strange dryness of the post-modernist language technique comes along - everything is going so very well that nothing could go wrong. The second thing that could happen is that nothing really seems to add up, everything is too dry and dreary and everything seems to have a strange repetitious feeling about it. Unfortunately, this is what happened here to this book of what was seeming to be modern/post-modern intriguing short stories of what the author believes to be real-life situations of relationships. Instead, the way in which the author believes women actually speak in real life seems to be both confusing and laughable at the same time. Several red flags in the relationship would have made the blind get up and walk away - and I am not only talking about the women. In the namesake story, a drunken woman beats up her husband/lover and yet, she is completely forgiven because of her ‘beauty’ and the fact that she just is. It makes zero sense and has no grounding in reality.

First of all in the namesake story entitled “Everything Like Before” we have a man named Carl who basically lets his lover get drunk and beat him up, take advantage of his feelings and then goes and cries about it to her afterwards. It is like there is nothing there to keep him in the relationship. But, at the same time, it is given no context as to why this happens at all, we kind of just have to accept the fact that this is the way it is. But without knowing how it was before, how can anything return to the way it was since it is called “Everything Like Before” ? It is something that I have wondered upon ever since I first read that story.

On the other hand, we have a story called “Sunhat” in which a woman feels the need to ask her husband permission to work and even though I believe this would have happened in the time that this author was writing - I do not find the speech and dialogue by either of the genders very convincing, much less so the woman. It was really this story that made me wonder about whether this author has actually ever spoken to a woman, whether in his own era or afterwards, before. Then we have the way in which the man is portrayed as a constantly angry stereotype of domestic abuse which well, is just as bad for reducing the psychological implications of the situation. All in all, I have to say that the thunder scene at the end of that story was something of a sigh of relief but not much was really going on.

In conclusion, I have to make a clean statement when someone tells me that this author is one of the greatest in Norwegian history and that statement is: I am pretty sure that Norway has better authors that this, especially in the post-modernist realm of hyper-realism. I find that this man is trying to Ernest Hemingway so much that he has accidentally skipped over into the fanboy territory and therefore has failed to actually achieve his goal of crafting the perfect post-modern story. When I was reading these stories I definitely saw the copycat nature of the author towards Ernest Hemingway.