A New Name: Septology VI - VII (2021) by Jon Fosse

 Book Review

A New Name: Septology VI- VII (2021)

by Jon Fosse

   Great, great idea for an Audiobook since the whole series- I think- is a single sentence.  The hypnotic/mesmeric quality really comes through and I positively raced through this last, seven hour installment.   Having listened to all seven volumes I would support readers who say that it is really just a single, long book.  Although Fosse uses flashbacks, all seven books essentially detail a week or so in the life (maybe as short as three days?) of Norwegian painter Asle.  Asle is old, living alone on the southwest coast of Norway.  He is lost in his memories, even as he deals with the alcohol related hospitalization of his neighbor and only friend, Asleik.  In the flashback segments, much of his musings revolve around another Asle, also a painter, and also an alcoholic.  Narrator Asle is a non-drinker and Catholic convert and he talks about both those subjects:  Alcohol and religions, over and over again. 

    Besides telling this parallel story of the other Asle- or is he another Asle? a reader may well be asking themselves by the end of the Septology,  narrator Asle narrates his bildungsroman- which basically involves being recognized as a talented painter while still in primary school and then the work it takes to get narrator Asle to his current, long-term position as a nationally recognized painter.   So all seven books of the Septology construct this single, coherent narrative about narrator Asle and other Asle, with enough indeterminacy to raise the question in the mind of the reader whether they aren't one and the same, with narrator Asle using other Asle to segment out the more traumatic circumstances of his adult life- including the abandonment of his infant son and wife while still a student.

  I actually Googled that question- whether the "other Asle" is real or not, and I'll stand by my interpretation- I think narrator Asle has carved off this other Asle to handle his more personally painful memories/regrets and then constructed this master persona- narrator Asle. 

  That is it for me and 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Jon Fosse- no way I am going to be looking to read more books by him.  I don't have any other Nobel winners in mind at the moment, I just scrolled through the past two decades of winners and didn't see anyone who jumped out.  Maybe just wait for this years winner?