AshehougAgency

A Full Life

Shortlisted for the 2009 P2 Listeners' Best Novel Prize

A young woman riding her bicycle is hit by a car, and the driver flees the scene. Isak visits his neighbour, the Russian woman Dahlia, to get something off his chest: he was the driver. They get to know each other and each other's stories. When Isak gets seriously ill and dies, Dahlia is burdened by a terrible secret. How can she tell people about what's happened? She starts writing and gets in touch with Isak's widow and daughter. However, it still seems impossible for her to open up.

A FULL LIFE is a soul searching novel about being exiled in the most profound way, and being the only one who knows.

Praise for A FULL LIFE:

“With her fourth novel, A Full Life, Mirjam Kristensen steps into the literary elite. In her latest novel, she manages to combine maturity and insight with a well written story that offers surprising and unexpected literary choices and turns. Already in her literary debut, The Days Are Transparent, Kristensen stood forth as a liberatingly fully-grown writer, and received the Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Award deservedly so. Since then, every book from Kristensen has confirmed an original talent (…) Kristensen’s prose is quiet, yet intense and literarily surprising (…) Kristensen has a taste and an eye for everyday details, smells and tastes, colours and interiors (…) Mirjam Kristensen is a wise and unobtrusive writer, who manages to pass on essential insights into life in an elegant and subtle way.”
(Dagsavisen)

"Exquisite about living in exile. (...) It is easy to ascertain that Mirjam Kristensen's fourth novel A Full Life is an extraordinarily good book. (...) The authors's transparent, controlled prose, which in some passages bursts like small glowing volcanic eruptions, manages to give the wellknown theme of loss a new and relevant meaning. At the same time it conveys a compact existenstial tension. (...) Once again Mirjam Kristensen stands forth as a stylistically aware and strong author with an essential agenda."
(Aftenposten)

“Kristensen is a writer who made her debut with the extraordinarily strong novel The Days Are Transparent, and who has managed to stay on that level ever since. This year’s novel is her fourth and is not a disgrace to her literary work, on the contrary, the book both expands and deepens it and confirms that we are dealing with an author to expect a lot from in the years to come (…) she measures up to the greatest stylists in Norwegian contemporary literature; one can only wish her a long and full life as a writer”
(NRK)

" A Full Life is a rich novel that will be picked out of the book shelf several times. Not just for you to read: When you want to lend a book to everyone you know, you can tell that it has affected you."
(Klassekampen)

”A brilliant novel. The writer has total control over her literary devices and truly has a story to tell (…) The joy of reading this text is first and foremost due to the strong sense of reality Kristensen manages to establish (…) I wish the novel will never end (…) Kristensen has written an excellent novel, a novel I will read again. I can’t wait”
(Adresseavisen)

"With her fourth novel, Mirjam Kristensen challenges the reader more than ever, and confirms her position as an important writer. (...) This is definately a literary novel. However, it is also a tremendously good story. To combine these two phenomena as well as Kristensen manages, is an achievement. I read the book and 'move into' it. The author keeps the reader captured (...) Have I then managed to tell you that this is a thrilling read, that it triggers both my moral and my emotional self, that it challenges my empathy, my sensitivity - and my ability to forgive? This is a novel you can move into for a few days. Something inside me really liked being there."
(Fædrelandsvennen)

”… one of the best and most meaningful books I have read in a long time … simple, but intense, and suspenseful from the first page to the last … there are few contemporary novels I can recommend stronger than this book. Buy it and read it! It will grip you and do something with you.”
(Dagen)

First published: 2009, Oktober
Mirjam Kristensen: Biography and bibliography

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