Who wants to study, when you can write a blog instead...
Do you ever wonder how your life would turn out if you did something different earlier on? That is very a common thing to do. The Dane Henrik has a quite different approach in Torben Munksgaard's first novel "Retrograd". Instead of reliving his memories in his mind, like we all do, when we think about our earlier love and life, the middle aged Henrik convinces himself that his past life is not only in his memory. He believes that he can simply redo his entire life backwards.
Retrograd is a harsh commentary on the life of Danish bourgeois, tending to their houses, gardens, jobs and marriages.
Retrograd is also about being young - especially in light of adult life that romanticizes and exaggerates the young persons ability to "choose" ones life freely. Another theme is as almost hinted, one of modernity or late-modernity. Meanwhile Munksgaard gives us an open and (maybe to women) chocking insight in the male sexuality and its common perversions. Thought to action is only a short way for Henrik.
About the morals of the story, I think it is safe to say in the words of Kierkegaard, "life is understood backwards, but lived forwards".
Munksgaard gives us a humorous account of middle life crisis that might be hard reading to middle aged Danes, but a common conception among young Danes, who look down upon everyday life in Danish suburbia.
Do you ever wonder how your life would turn out if you did something different earlier on? That is very a common thing to do. The Dane Henrik has a quite different approach in Torben Munksgaard's first novel "Retrograd". Instead of reliving his memories in his mind, like we all do, when we think about our earlier love and life, the middle aged Henrik convinces himself that his past life is not only in his memory. He believes that he can simply redo his entire life backwards.
Retrograd is a harsh commentary on the life of Danish bourgeois, tending to their houses, gardens, jobs and marriages.
Retrograd is also about being young - especially in light of adult life that romanticizes and exaggerates the young persons ability to "choose" ones life freely. Another theme is as almost hinted, one of modernity or late-modernity. Meanwhile Munksgaard gives us an open and (maybe to women) chocking insight in the male sexuality and its common perversions. Thought to action is only a short way for Henrik.
About the morals of the story, I think it is safe to say in the words of Kierkegaard, "life is understood backwards, but lived forwards".
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