Kyrre Andreassen - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Kyrre Andreassen. He has written Not People I can Depend on (original title: Ikke mennesker jeg kan regne med). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2024.
What is your book about?
The external plot is easy to explain. The book is about Linda Hansen, a mother of two, who is employed by the local council. She lives with Svein, they have two children, and one day Svein tells her that he no longer has feelings for her.
But when I’m writing I have no idea what the novel is really about. I don’t sit at the computer with the intention of writing about a topic. If that were the case, I’d worry about the writing becoming locked in a groove, that I might lose what’s free, dynamic and intuitive about it.
It’s always exciting to get feedback from first readers, to hear what they say about what they have read. And it always varies so much. This novel has been called both a divorce novel, a revenge novel, a love novel and a collective novel – and a novel about a woman seeking the truth.
Now that a little time has passed, I think the novel is about community and the loss of community. Linda Hansen feels a sense of community with Svein, which takes precedent over her dream of studying, and living, in the big city. As the novel goes on, she not only loses this community, but also other communities which are important to her, and I’ve probably tried to find out what this can do to a person.
What inspired you to write the book?
I don’t believe much in inspiration. But if you say that inspiration is the same as the desire to work, I can say that it stemmed from my desire to write about the countryside, to make the landscape which has been important to me feel as alive as possible. And in that landscape, I saw the 19-year-old girl reading Crime and Punishment on a beer crate in a workshop where her boyfriend repaired cars. There was also another image; a man telling his wife that he no longer has feelings for her, while warming up a pasty for himself. I gradually realised that the two images were separated by twenty years, that they feature the same people, and that these images are what the novel revolves around.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2024 here
