Praise:
“…it's easy to see where [Elling’s] off-kilter appeal lies…[it] carries hints of screwball comedy, road novel, and coming-of-age tale for the borderline sociopathic. At heart, though—and there’s much heart to be found in it—Mr. Ambjørnsen's story is an ode to friendship and an exaggerated study of the difficulties of getting on in the world. The novel has a engagingly oddball sense of humor and a finely detailed depiction of its peculiar protagonist.” – New York Sun
“This is an easy-to-read, surprisingly humorous book, not just for its felicitious asides but also for its realistic depiction of obsessive compulsion…This well-written, tender volume confirms [Ambjørnsen's] excellence.” – Hartford Courant
“…finely grained, imaginative fiction…Ambjørnsen has hurdled sociology in a novel as funny as it is fabulous.” – Chicago Sun-Times
“Ambjørnsen creates a gentle, but never saccharine, comedy out of Elling’s tentative engagement with the world beyond the great indoors. He gives Elling an endearing, childishly direct voice, but adds an edge of anger that keeps the tone arrestingly eccentric.” — Guardian (U.K.)
“Hilarious...Told with balance, pace and wit...This book is unhesitatingly recommended as a bizarrely ordinary celebration of friendship, love and adventure against the odds.” — Independent (U.K.)
“A pair of odd-couple bachelors discharged from a mental asylum set up an unusual household in this heartening work by Norwegian novelist Ambjørnsen…a madcap recovery adventure.” – Publishers Weekly
Elling
Reader’s Choice Simultaneous Paperback ReleaseBy Ingvar Ambjørnsen
November 09, 2007ISBN: 978-1-59692-255-6
Format: Hardcover Genre: Fiction Pages: 300
Price: $23.00 Rights: U.S. Other Rights: Transworld Publishing, U.K.
Awards: Brage Prize
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Buy this book at: BookSense.com
About the Book
The endearing and hilarious story of two just-released mental patients—one shy and imaginative, the other big and dumb—who struggle to find their place in the real world.
The Norwegian government has decided that Elling and his roommate, Kjell Bjarne, are ready to leave the Broynes Rehabilitation Center and move into an apartment in Oslo together. Told to live like “normal” people, the neurotic Elling and the oafish Kjell Bjarne quickly find themselves overwhelmed with important life lessons: phone sex lines cost a lot of money, kittens do not belong on the metro, and when you’re invited to a friend’s house for dinner, it’s best not to arrive five hours early.
Gradually, carefully, our heroes reach out beyond each other—Elling to a reclusive old man he meets at a poetry reading, Kjell Bjarne to a pregnant neighbor abandoned by her boyfriend—and in so doing find the strength not just to rely on someone else, but also to be relied on themselves.
Sweet, sarcastic, and moving, the original Norwegian novel was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2001.
Reader's Choice Simultaneous Paperback Release
ISBN: Trade Paperback:978-1-59692-256-3
U.S. $13.00
About the Author
One of the most critically and commercially successful contemporary Norwegian authors, Ingvar Ambjørnsen has written eighteen novels and three collections of short stories, as well as several children’s and young adult titles. The recipient of many literary awards, including the prestigious Brage Prize (1995), he currently lives in Hamburg with his German wife and translator, Gabriele Haefs.