An astonishing book

'Will and Testament', a novel by Norwegian Vigdis Hjorth, available from Verso, is a masterpiece. Reading the book, translated into English by Charlotte Barslund, is coming to grips with a new type of novel that should inspire and be followed across the literary world.

But I suppose nothing is for certain. For example the Guardian review, printed on the back of the book, manages to entirely miss the point of 'Will and Testament'.
'This is a novel that people can enjoy either as high literature or as a work of down-and-dirty revenge.'

Anybody is entitled to have their own understanding about a public book - and even have their views printed. But it is difficult to see anything in the Guardian's comment that touches on the simple furnace of truth that the main character opens up to us. Bergljot is not producing 'high literature' or plotting her vengeance. She is ruminating on the terrible events of her childhood and struggling with her day to day relationships, her friends, her children and relatives and her meaning as a sophisticated, older woman. She is doing it in her totally clear, often repeated (but never copied) razor sharp, thoughts.

I'm not going to repeat the 'plot.' (It hangs around a will and a testament.) The essence of the book is surely not the plot in the simple sense of a 'beginning, middle and end' story. It is the astonishingly honest reflections of a woman who is trying to survive. The simple truths that hesitantly emerge, then tumble out, then block any movement and then overwhelm the sadness of pain and fear are mounted inside the same theme, but are endlessly different. The events in the book are platforms in Bergljot's present life and require their consideration, they create further revelations and her fuller emergence.

What is the result for the reader from this revelatory experience? The opposite of boredom (or any fight with 'high literature' or a dished up cathartic solution). It is the intimate knowledge of another person. Frankly, a life-changing event.

Criticism? Well; there are all the innate aspects and implications of the western world to deal with. They are present in all works, in every piece of western art and culture. Bergljot does not represent the whole of humanity (and does not pretend too.) More, Bergljot has access to therapy, a signal part of her history in the book. (We do not go there with her.) And the book's author allows for a different character to spell out to Bergljot the Freudian message of personality - where unresolved 'instincts' are discovered as the reason for human beings' grotesque acts, such as the overthrow of humanity's reason in the 1st WW. Interestingly, Bergljot makes no comments about her friend's views on Freud. To be honest, it is the least engaging part of the novel. The 'why' of her abuse is much more real as she describes her own experience of the abuser.

The argument surrounding the social context of personality is not developed in the novel, exception touched on the above. The core remains the irrefutable, unmistakable, unforgettable truth.