Restless by Kenneth Moe
Review by Gary Kaill
In his debut novel, the Norwegian writer Kenneth Moe charts the downward spiral of his desolate protagonist with artful precision
‘On some level, maybe all books are an attempt to break the connection between the work and the obsession that inspires the work, so that for the briefest of moments one is free to let new obsessions grow.’
Such is the unflinching worldview of the narrator of Kenneth Moe’s debut novel, originally published in Moe’s native Norway in 2015, and the winner of that year’s Tarjei Vesaas Debutantpris, awarded each year in memory of the great Norwegian writer. Restless (‘Rastløs’) finally makes its English language debut courtesy of the UK’s Nordisk books and an impeccable translation by Alison McCullough.
Huge credit to McCullough for her work here. Restless is slim at barely a hundred pages, but its weight is inarguable. Narrated in a bleakly self-aware first person, simply maintaining the unwavering grimness of tone must, in itself, have been a unique challenge. Its story amounts to very little, but the narrative momentum here is enough to cause the reader to complete the book in a single, fevered sitting.
That story, a pointed and acidic reflection on an encounter with a woman that ended in her rejecting the narrator, is told by an unnamed young man in a manner that barely acknowledges the reader. These are one man’s thoughts, unspooling as they arrive, and you can offer your attention or not: the story continues without you. This is, on some levels, as unsympathetic a piece of fiction as you are likely to encounter. As the events that have led up to this monologue are gradually laid out, the narrator finds a series of distractions, of half-explored side-roads, that cause him to lose his thread and shift the story into something altogether more self-regarding and fleetingly post-modern.
The nature of the rejection itself is revealed to be as mundane and incalculable as real-life would inevitably provide: ‘My right hand started a journey, criss-crossing your body… “This won’t work,” you said. You got up, straightened your clothes. I lay on the sofa through the rest of the night and early hours, watching the sun creep down the mountainside outside the window as I thought about what just happened, and what should have.’
Restless is unremittingly bleak, but it is richly imagined. The stark nature of both events and setting make for a book that is read from a distance. There is little for the empathetic reader to attach to. But, perhaps, it is a book that could be read if not incorrectly, then inappropriately. Those is search of a likeable protagonist should look elsewhere. Certainly, this is a viewpoint character almost questless in his movements. When he addresses the woman (she, too, remains nameless), switching to a chill second-person, there is only the candour to admire: ‘You buttoned up your coat. You suggested we make snow angels and I thought: “Is she retarded?” A few days later you wrote to me: “I’m probably not as virtuous as you think,” but I never really thought you were particularly virtuous.’
And so it continues. Even at the end, when nothing has been resolved and the narrator is slowly folding on himself like a bar drunk collapsing into his stool, ‘I bumped into you in the street the other day and felt nothing’ is delivered so cooly, it feels like the best bet is actually to remove all doubt and take this grimy hauteur at absolute face value. There is no relenting.
Restless is a remarkable undertaking and Moe’s real achievement here is the crafting of something so immediately unappealing, that it causes the reader to question not only why they read, but what is in it for them. Is this book a deal so completely one-sided that our participation itself is upended, rejected even? Perhaps. But it works, on its own particular and demanding terms, exceptionally well. The story might be slight but the characterisation, in particular, is artfully managed and to be admired.
And who are we to say that we will not allow the (seemingly) despicable onto our shelves? Moe is acutely aware of the fragile relationship that exists between reader and writer, and the space that his creation occupies in that no-mans land that separates the two. When he has the mouthpiece of this enthralling, challenging book turn the mirror fully on both himself and the process of writing - ‘Literature… seethes with bodily fluids, with snot and blood and even worse, these things that flow between people. This book has become like a pot full of them, and I’ve also shoved you (an innocent) into the soup’ - it signals an authorial position that brooks no argument: Moe’s rules of engagement. We are all complicit here, he seems to say. There can be no looking away.
Restless by Kenneth Moe (translated by Alison McCullough) is published 14/5/20