Meet Gunnhild Øyehaug - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Gunnhild Øyehaug. She has written Heart Undercover (original title: Hjartet i skalkeskulet). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the spring 2023.
Read our interview with Gunnhild here.
What is the book about?
Heart Undercover is a collection of ten essays – some long, some a bit shorter – but what they all have in common is that they focus on art, literature, film, or music. They’re about inspiration and about reading, watching, and writing. Among other things, I write about some of Edvard Munch’s paintings, Nikolai Astrup, American author Mary Ruefle, enthusiasm, Kate Bush’s music video where she dances so peculiarly in a red dress to the song “Wuthering Heights” (and I wonder: is this ironic? Or heartfelt?), Russian filmmaker Andrej Tarkovsky, and what it’s like to watch a film 19 times. A pretty slow film at that. The motto for the collection is a quote by Finland-Swedish poet Tua Forsström, and it goes like this: “When someone changes you, do you realize it?” The reason why I set this quote as a motto is that change/transformation is a central theme. For example, I’ve looked at what happened when Nikolai Astrup changed in my own perception – from being a painter I perceived as almost realistic to understanding that something completely different was hidden there. I also write about what happened when I realized that, in order to become an author, it’s no use not reading books (which I believed in my youth) in order to protect my original voice. What is originality, the book asks. The title – Heart Undercover – plays on the constant alternation between closeness and disguise, truth and representation.
What inspired you to write this book?
I think this is a book for everyone who enjoys reading, and it might be of particular interest to those who like to write as well. It’s largely about finding a way into writing. I’ve also received quite a few responses from various readers saying that they recognize themselves in an essay that deals with how their opinions of works of art change throughout life; something you experienced as powerful and important at one point is less important in another – but it can also return. My hope is that the reader will find a new desire to read, see, and think after having read this book and want to seek out the work – or world – and perhaps write about what they’ve observed.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
Read more about the author here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the spring 2023 here
