Trying and Failing
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‘Are you trying to ruin your life?’ Hannah’s friends say when she tells them she’s having children with Magne.
Trial and Error is a novel about an almost completely normal couple. Like all parents of young children, Magne and Hannah have their challenges, but with Magne in a wheelchair even a trip to the beach at Huk turns into a gruelling odyssey. In spite of his master’s degree in literary science, Magne has a poorly paid job as a hotel receptionist. But with his visible disability, he is at least a welcome expression of the hotel chain’s benevolence and its diversity policy.
Magne and Hannah had intended to show the world – show the world that they could make it, show the world that it was possible.
But a lot can go wrong, and there are many ways to mess it all up.
‘With his novel “Trying and Failing”, Jan Grue completes an exceptional trilogy about disability and vulnerability. (…) Masterfully, Grue exposes the illusion that we all, even in Norway, have something within our reach that even comes close to resembling an equal life. (…) Grue affectingly demonstrates how complicated challenges for the disabled can really be – and how deeply problematic it is to pigeonhole people.’
VG, 5 out of 6 stars
