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The Man Who Loved Yngve

The year is 1990. It is the year the world chooses to call a halt in order to start afresh. While Gorbachev is touring the world in triumph, Jarle is still at school in Stavanger. He plays in a band, has a beautiful girlfriend, wears a Palestinian scarf and holds strong opinions on most of the issues of the day. He is the kind of person who is determined to be different. Then a new boy starts at his school, a boy seemingly as straight as they come and undistinguished in every way. But there's something special about him nonetheless. Who is this odd newcomer, Yngve? Jarle's meeting with Yngve is destined to change everything - both for himself and for those around him.

THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE is a wide-ranging tale of fascination and falling in love, of trying to become a human being, of entering the world, of loving one's mother and hoping to avoid speaking to one's father.

When THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE  appeared on the big screen in January 2008, it received brilliant reviews, and so far more than 170.000 Norwegians have seen it in the cinema. The film was also named "Best film" at the Nordic film festival in Lübeck in November 2008, and earned great reviews on its release in Denmark later that month.

THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE is the first book in Tore Renberg's series of freestanding novels about Jarle. The other books are The Orheim Company and Charlotte Isabel Hansen .

Click here for English sample translation.

Movie trailer - The Man Who Loved Yngve

Praise for THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE:

"Written with a charming drive … speaks to people of all ages, but if you were young in the 1990s, the book is a must-read … The problems of identity are eternally recognisable, whatever your age."
(Politiken, Denmark)

"... engaging and persuasive"
(Dagbladet, Oslo)

"An exceptionally well-written novel"
(NRK)

"This year's most powerful novel about growing up"
(Klassekampen, Oslo)

"The powerful energy of Tore Renberg's novel takes its reader by surprise (...) The novel describes the boundless courage and immense vulnerability of teenage boys, the troughs and peaks of their emotions, and the mad intensity of falling in love"
(Aftenposten, Oslo)

"Tore Renberg's THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE  is a joyful story about falling in love at first sight. An overwhelming infatuation, and I have to say, an enchanting novel"
(Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm)

"One of the most important threads running through the novel is the description of unexpected and explosive passion. Jarle quite simply becomes Stavanger's Werther, comparable with regard to pathos, stamina, infatuation and blindness. It might all sound immature and silly, but in fact it is very touching (...) The reader is lead down a twisting road of sparkling wit, imagination, self-irony, and darkness too, through the unpredictable territory of the heart at its most vulnerable"
(Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm)

”Renberg writes simply, yet manages what our Swedish portrayers of youth do far too seldom. He analyzes, problematizes and historicizes; he places his story in a wider political, economic and cultural context…the resigned tone makes me think at times of Haruki Murakami’s bestseller Norwegian Wood, with the Beatles replaced by the The Jesus and Mary Chain and Japan swopped for, you guessed it, Norway”
(Expressen, Sweden)

”This may sound like just another politically correct, arty novel about being a teenager, but there is a great deal more to it than that… Renberg’s style is hectic, rich in words and captures with great precision Jarle’s galloping nightmare. The most powerful scene is when the world of Jarle’s smugly petty bourgeois mother falls to pieces. She suddenly loses her job, and Renberg manages to capture tenderheartedly and in a troublingly illusory way the sense of resigned humiliation she feels on visiting the unemployment office for the first time”
(Aftonbladet, Sweden)

”I am seriously tempted to skip bits just to find out what happens. Even though it’s long into the wee hours, I just can’t seem to put it down”
(Kristianstadsbladet, Sweden)

”A masterpiece … people who for some unfathomable reason or other cannot imagine reading Mannen som elsket Yngve are going to spend the rest of their lives wandering around with a feeling that something important is missing”
(Gefle Dagblad, Sweden)

”It’s easy to love THE MAN WHO LOVED YNGVE … We know how important the first lines are to catch the reader’s attention. And the beginning of this charming novel got me at least hooked … Renberg’s portrayal of this infatuation is at once touching and troubling, fantastic and so accurate that you can remember what a teenage crush was like with all the boundless bravado and the vulnerability so painful that it knocks you for six … Mannen som elsket Yngve is an emotional cluster of a novel with Love as its main character, and indeed this is the way we fall in love – with love itself”
(Hallands Nyheter, Sweden)

”The story is told free of irony, employing instead a clear-sighted and unsentimental tenderness; this is a rather good portrayal of the troubles and confusion that arise from passionate love: how it can make us become someone we do not really recognize … In short, everything is done very well, very calm and very tragic, just as it should be”
(Göteborgsposten, Sweden)

”already on the first page you understand that the story of the 17 year old Jarle Klepp is a coming of age tale of unusually high literary quality that will remain with the reader for a long time ... an amusing and easily read book which all generations will enjoy.”
(Weekly recommendation, Gentofte Bibliotek, Denmark)

First published: 2003, Forlaget Oktober
Tore Renberg:   Biography and bibliography

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