Long Live the Post Horn!

July 15, 2020
A 35-year-old Norwegian publicist faces an existential crisis in Hjorth's quirky, unsettling novel. Hjorth hangs her plot on a footnote in Norwegian history. In 2011, the European Union demanded that the Norwegian postal service allow competition in the delivery of letters weighing less than 50 grams, and the postal union fought back. The novel imagines narrator Ellinor as part of a ragtag three-person publicity company that is reduced by a third when Dag, who is supposed to be handling the postal union's account, suddenly quits, sails away, and commits suicide. Ellinor, who often can't remember what she did a day or an hour ago and who yearns "for a breakdown. To surrender to it and be carted off to a quiet and balmy place far away," at first feels that the boredom of the account may push her over the edge, but then she commits to allowing the passion and enthusiasm of the union members to give her own life meaning. Unfortunately for the reader, unhinged Ellinor is far more fascinating than the Ellinor who exults in the intricacies of letter delivery and the details of converting people to the union cause. Just when it seems that Ellinor may be able to lift herself out of the depths of trying to make sense of her old diaries and focus on the people around her, including a newly pregnant sister and a newish boyfriend with a son from an earlier relationship, she becomes obsessed with the postal union. Her friends and family, insufficiently developed as characters, fall to the narrative wayside, and the reader is left trying to work up some interest in arcane matters. Though it's tempting to suspect that Hjorth is taking a nuanced view of Ellinor's obsession, ultimately it seems that we're supposed to conclude that it's straightforwardly noble, and it grows increasingly hard to care about either Ellinor or her redemption. An unconvincing account of willed self-transformation.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.