T Singer
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The new novel in English from one of Norway’s most celebrated writers.
T Singer confronts indomitable loneliness in Solstad’s classic, heartbreaking yet darkly comic style.
‘A kind of surrealistic writer… Serious literature’ Haruki Murakami
‘Mad, sad and funny… Thrilling’ Geoff Dyer
Singer, a thirty-four-year-old recently trained librarian, arrives by train in the small town of Notodden to begin a new and anonymous life. He falls in love with Merete, a ceramicist, and moves in with her and her young daughter. After a few years together, the relationship starts to falter, and as the couple is on the verge of separating a car accident prompts a dramatic change in Singer’s life…
‘An utterly hypnotic writer’ James Wood
‘Solstad is expert in delineating the absurdities of existence…’ Sunday Times
Winner of the Norwegian Critics Prize
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Solstad's unusual, entertaining novel of restrained humor follows its protagonist, T Singer, over a lifetime of nonengagement. Singer is something of a Bartleby whose neuroses compel him to retreat from life, abandon his hilarious attempts to write the perfect sentence ("one fine day he stood eye to eye with a memorable sight"), and move to the small town of Notodden at age 34 to become the town librarian. The prose repeatedly swerves into digressions about minutiae did Singer inadvertently make a fool of himself when he talked to K thinking he was talking to B? How can he not interact with library visitors who appreciate him? After a bizarre encounter with a millionaire who gives him a system for making infinite money, Singer settles into a dull marriage with Merete and helps take care of her daughter, Isabella. After the marriage ends, Singer and his stepdaughter move to Oslo and try to start over. As Solstad increases the pace and Singer shrinks more into himself, the reader begins to feel the wonder of his shaky connection with Isabella. The novel brilliantly shows the humor and pain of obsessiveness, and the anxious, analytic Singer emerges as an enduring creation.
