Thursday, July 26, 2007

Norwegian good

Via Complete Review, a look at a 1984 Norwegian novel (as yet unenglished) by Lars Saabye Christensen entitled Beatles:

Beatles is narrated by Kim Karlsen, and it's the story of him and his three buddies, Gunnar, Ola, and Seb—and, yes, they occasionally like to think of themselves as the Fab Four. They were born in 1951, and the story starts with the first wave of Beatlemania in Norway, in the spring of 1965. Each chapter takes a different Beatle song (or, near the end, post-Beatles solo song) as its title and theme—all the way through the winter of 1972—, but Christensen doesn't go completely overboard with this. It sounds—and, at first, looks—a bit too simple and obvious, but it's only a loose structure: this is a story of teenage years in Norway in the late 1960s, with music playing a big but not overwhelming role. (The Beatles are idolised, but don't always hit the right note: surprisingly often the lads are disappointed by the newest song— though practically each new single and album is a major event for them.)

I like the idea of chapters named after song titles (à la Special Topics in Calamity Physics' organizing scheme).

(Here's what Dizzyhead Darren had to say about a previous LSB novel, in the PTSNBN...oops, looks like I used the exact same headline that I did for this post! Curiously, I didn't know then that LSB had written a book called Beatles.)

Dizzyhead challenge: Name ten books (fiction or non-) which use Beatles titles!

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2 Comments:

Blogger Dewey Dell said...

Number 9 Dream - David Mitchell
Norweigan Wood - Haruki Murakami
The White Album - Joan Didion (Does this count for the other seven?)

7:41 PM  
Blogger Ed Park said...

We'll give you three points for THE WHITE ALBUM; however, N9D doesn't count (Lennon!) —— !!

8:49 AM  

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