2024
You Are So Beautiful is a novel about a boy on the brink of becoming a young man, all whilst another young man is fading away. This is a story that touches upon grabbing the chances life gives you - and the fact that one day, quite suddenly, there may be no more chances to grab.
It's summertime, and everything is different now. Uncle Simon moves in with Henrik and his mother. Simon and Henrik have always been close, but now Simon is ill - really ill. It's not difficult to work out what will happen, even if his mother avoids coming right out and saying it. Henrik tells Simon that he has kissed Kjersti, a girl in his class at school, even though he hasn't. He didn't dare, even when he had the chance. Kjersti is due home soon from her holiday in Italy, and Henrik wonders if she has missed him at all.
English sample translation available
The title How beautiful You are can be seen as a description of the novel itself. … Emphatic sentence structures lend the storytelling intensity and power. The advice to ‘Seize the day’ can be read between the lines. Go for the options open to you in the here and now, one day it might be too late!
If it was possible to speak with books, I might well have said to this short novel How Beautiful You are. How beautiful and how painful you are.
...this novel has unmistakable qualities, not least because the young reader is offered good opportunities to keep in touch with his or her own emotions.
Living is fantastic and painful at the same time, and described here in a poetic prose that moves the reader. This is a fine novel.
Brynjulf Jung Tjønn
Photo: Fredrik Arff
