(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The covers really tell everything. Cover of Hans Christian Green's debut book That is strict (2000) is adorned by the polar bear statue that welcomes you to the Lindeberg Center. You must have set foot in this unspoilt village of Groruddalen to understand the cover at all. On the cover of this year's sequel, Facts damn – from A to Z about what applied in the 80s, four private childhood images fight for attention with 23 different 80's icons. Did you grow up in Norway in the 1980s, it is impossible to prevent your own memories from flowing at the sight of the cartoon character Moonlight, a football card with Kenny Dalglish, a bust of Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, a jojo, a ninja star or an Apache- bicycle. The cover signifies how Green has now found the balance between private and collective shimmering.
Mini-encyclopedia
The covers speak for the content. The debut was an almost internal depiction of a friend's gang from Lindeberg, which was sometimes unrecognizable to even other Lindeberg residents (the reviewer himself is from there). The sequel is an internal depiction of a friend's gang of Lindeberg, and now Green is able to make the internal public recognizable to a much greater extent. The form is the same in both books; Here are memories, slang, people, stories and secrets from the upbringing in the drab town, organized as a mini-lexicon of cross references between the words. To take an example we recognize from the cover: "Apache, kulin bicycle named after vass Indian tribe. For optimal effect i Police and thief On bicycles, it was important to have the right accessories. This meant the orange Aftenposten flag, football cards of spokes, plenty of cat eyes on the dashboard, gear, speedometer, splash pad Boffa from trailer and steering wheel with fur. "
So the form is the same, so why is the sequel so much more successful than the debut? Much of the secret is that this year's book concentrates on adolescence up to 15 years, where the debut was more or less concerned with the end of adolescence. After the age of 15, the childhood gang slides apart, and we develop our own interests, jargons and attitudes. In childhood, on the other hand, the common generational character is much stronger. Everyone learns the same thing at school, watches the same TV programs, plays the same toys, buys the same sweets and uses the same expressions, and consequently develops a kind of collective memory – no matter where in Norway you grow up. Even though Fuck the facts takes place in a small drab city in Oslo east, and Green goes into depth on very internal things like life in Furuset Hockey and his own runaway fantasies, at the same time he takes on so many general phenomena from the 80s that he finds the balance he struggles to keep in That is strict. At the same time, the geographical and social narrowness gives the book a personality and nerve that is absent in many other 80s mime books. It should also be mentioned that this is the 80's seen from the guys' point of view, for the girls mostly play roles such as mermaid, small ribs and digging ladies.
A building kit
Boats That is strict og Fuck the facts had a promise of an exciting childhood novel from Groruddalen, but feels more like finding a box of Lego. The lexical form and the lack of a pervasive story makes it difficult to read from A to Z, but with the help of the various building blocks you can assemble yourself a piece of pieces from your own childhood. Fuck the facts not only offers far more of these building blocks in relation to the debut, very many will probably also fit better into the reader's own head – regardless of whether you have set foot in Groruddalen or not. It's still not the exciting childhood novel I feel Green has in it, but Fuck the facts stimulates the mimic muscle to such an extent that you want to write your own growing up novel. And the I rarely get the feeling of Norwegian novels.
