Girl, 1983, book review

 

Girl, 1983

Linn Ullmann, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken

W.W, Norton & Company, 2024, original 2021

 

“A masterpiece. It pushes the fused power of memoir and story to a new dimension.” Ali Smith

I’ve read Ali Smith—along with a whole slew of other authors that blurbed the book: Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, Roxana Robinson, Claire Messud. This is a power field of influencers, all praising Girl, 1983. But, it is the Smith endorsement that caught my attention. You see, memoir and story are the cornerstones of my Freeze Frame: Micro-Memoir workshop.

Also, the 1980s is hot right now. There’s been a flashback to that era of glam, neons, and discothèques. Raving all night long before AIDS, the pandemic, before fractious politics. Maybe not AIDS—it’s at the door, knocking. The memories and vignettes are built around tension, a secret, a blurry photograph that keeps the narrator awake at night, from enjoying life, caught in a confluence of guilt and questions.

Questions I’ve often pondered: What is permission? What is the age of consent? What is the difference between discovery and a stolen childhood? What exactly is it we regret? Some of us at middle age or beyond wish we’d given in/lived a little/wasted youth, while others ruminate the fact that they did.

Our minds rake over the past, adding and subtracting.

The material is deftly handled by Ullmann (daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and Swedish director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman). The novel is a quick read, All the while you wonder: is this autobiographical, what they call autofiction? It could be true, it could have happened. It does happen.

The Epstein Files are in the news, along with the Duke and Duchess of York, tRump. Powerful people wielding power over underage girls.

The novels Girl, 1983 and Call Me By Your Name raise interesting questions to all sorts of questions. The answers, themselves, are enigmas.