Companions
Published on 30. August 2017
408 pages
978-1-910695-34-0 (ISBN)
Description
Camilla, Charles, Alma, Edward, Alwilda and Kristian are a circle of friends hurtling through mid-life. Structured as a series of monologues jumping from one friend to the next, Companions follows their loves, ambitions, pains and anxieties as they age, fall sick, have affairs, grieve, host dinner parties and move between the Lake District, Berlin, Lisbon, Belgrade, Mozambique, New York and, of course, Denmark. In her first book to be translated into English, Christina Hesselholdt explores everyday life, the weight of the past and the difficulty of intimacy in a uniquely playful and experimental style. At once deeply comic and remarkably insightful, Companions is an exhilarating portrait of life in the twenty-first century.
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Christina Hesselholdt, born in 1962, studied at the Danish Academy of Creative Writing in Copenhagen. Her first novel, Køkkenet, Gravkammeret & Landskabet [The Kitchen, the Tomb & the Landscape], was published in 1991. She has written fifteen books of prose, and received critical acclaim and awards for her books, including the Beatrice Prize in 2007 and the Critics' Prize in 2010. She was included in Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2013. Companions is her first book to appear in English. Her latest work, Vivian, a novel about the photographer Vivian Maier, was published by Rosinante in 2016. It won the Danish Radio Best Novel Award 2017 and has been shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2017.
Content
- Intro
- Praise
- Title Page
- CONTENTS
- I. CAMILLA AND THE HORSE
- THE RAMBLE
- ANIMALS
- DEATH HOUSE
- CAMILLA AND THE HORSE
- CAMILLA AND CHARLES
- II. CAMILLA AND THE REST OF THE PARTY
- CAMILLA AND THE REST OF THE PARTY
- CAMILLA'S GPS
- IF ASHES HAD EYES
- NATURE AS A SERIES OF BACKDROPS
- THE FACE OF RUBBISH
- THE HOUSES AND THEIR BRILLIANT SUICIDE VICTIMS
- CHARLES REVISITED
- A THEATRE OF SOULS or THE ENTIRE PARTY
- RELOCATIONS
- III. THE PARTY BREAKS UP
- THE PATIENTS or CAMILLA AND ALMA'S EARLY YEARS
- CAN I APPROPRIATE HER MUM?
- WEDDING
- THE WORLD'S GO-GO POLE
- THE HAIR IN THE DRAWER
- NOT DIVIDING, SUBDIVIDING
- A TEA PARTY (AROUND CHARLES'S BED)
- FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH
- THE MARCH HARE
- IV. MAROONED
- ALONE IN PARADISE, WITH THE GARDENERS AND THE HEDGEHOG'S HEART
- BERNHARD'S SHOES, A NOTE
- THE BOSS
- THE VETERINARIAN'S BROTHER
- COLUMBIA, THREE LITTLE CHINAMEN (AND A WILD HAPPINESS)
- FRAGMENTS OF THE COMPANIONS' CONVERSATION IN THE GARDEN
- QUEEN OF THE JAMS WITH THE STICKY LEGS
- THE LIST OF ITEMS AND MATTERS ALREADY WRITTEN
- EEYORE WITH A STICK OF DYNAMITE IN HIS MOUTH
- ONCE THEY START TO LOOK
- MY TWO MAIN CHARACTERS
- BY THE BANKS OF THE BOOKCASE
- Acknowledgements
- Permissions
- About the Author
- Copyright
