Great Occurrences on a Small Scale
Store hendelser i liten skala
What happens when there is no longer any need for you, neither at home, nor at work, and you are the last one to realize?
This is the starting point in the novel Great Occurrences on a Small Scale where we meet the librarian Arne Sjølingstad on the same day where he retires involuntarily. But Arne still loves his job, he lives and breathes for the communal projects and he has no plans to give in.
Great Occurrences on a Small Scale is a comical novel with a great seriousness. Through the eyes of the main character, that are more than normally dominated by his enthusiastic view of the job as a communal librarian, a great difference is exposed between life as he would like it to be and life as it turned out.
With great virtuosity, Bjørn Arild Ersland has created a recognizable and identifiable local universe where the movements is the depth of life are detectable in the tiny ripples on the surface of the language.
‘A lovely piece of work …. please keep writing novels.’
NRK, Norwegian broadcasting
‘What Stoner would read like if it was written by Dag Solstad.’
Dagens Næringsliv
‘In his protagonist Arne, Ersland has found this spring’s warmest and most truthful narrator.’
Littkritikk.no
‘Bjørn Arild Ersland writes with an almost devilish humoristic precision.’
Bergens Tidende
