Elisa Segrave
Running Scared
Story of a Marriage
By Geir Gulliksen (Translated by Deborah Dawkin)
Hogarth 172pp £12.99 order from our bookshop
This deceptively simple novel, set in Norway and told in exquisitely lean prose, is full of erotic exchanges between a married couple. At times painful to read, it is also compulsive. The narrator, still in love with his wife – he calls her Timmy after an upbeat cartoon character – tries to make sense of their twenty-year marriage. The tale unfolds with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.
We quickly learn that he left his first wife and their two-year-old daughter for Timmy, then a young medical student whom he first encountered when she examined his daughter’s throat. Oddly, this is the moment when Timmy appears at her most tender. Otherwise, it’s difficult to warm to her:
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger
'The eight years he has spent in solitary confinement have had a devastating impact on his mental health ... human rights organisations believe his detention is punishment for his critical views.'
@lucyjpop on the Egyptian activist and poet Ahmed Douma.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ahmed-douma