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This Should Be Written in the Present Tense
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Catapult 2016
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Description
Dorte is twenty and adrift, pretending to study literature at Copenhagen University. In reality she is riding the trains and clocking up random encounters in her new home by the railway tracks. She remembers her ex, Per – the first boyfriend she tells us about, and the first she leaves – as she enters a new world of transient relationships, random sexual experiences and awkward attempts to write.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
01/01/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781619027626
ASIN:
B018DWLBPO
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Helle Helle. (2016). This Should Be Written in the Present Tense. Catapult.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Helle Helle. 2016. This Should Be Written in the Present Tense. Catapult.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Helle Helle, This Should Be Written in the Present Tense. Catapult, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Helle Helle. This Should Be Written in the Present Tense. Catapult, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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55d86829-ad80-6a02-717e-22506315243e
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No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 16:07:02
Date Updated:
Jan 04, 2021 17:28:36
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:28:53
Last Metadata Change:
Oct 01, 2023 09:18:41
Last Availability Check:
Mar 24, 2024 07:28:56
Last Availability Change:
Jul 16, 2020 23:55:12
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

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      • bioText: Helle Helle published her first book in 1993. Since then, her work has garnered overwhelming critical and popular acclaim. Recently awarded the Golden Laurel literary prize, Helle Helle is the recipient of countless literary accolades, among them the Danish Critics’ Prize, the Danish Academy’s Beatrice Prize, the P.O. Enquist Award and the prestigious Lifetime Award of the Danish Arts Council. Her novels and short stories have been translated into fifteen languages. She lives in Denmark.
        Martin Aitken is the acclaimed translator of numerous novels from Danish, including works by Peter Høeg, Jussi Adler-Olsen and Pia Juul, and his translations of short stories and poetry have appeared in many literary journals and magazines. In 2012 he was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize.
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imprint
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2016-01-01T00:00:00-05:00
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title
This Should Be Written in the Present Tense
fullDescription
Dorte is twenty and adrift, pretending to study literature at Copenhagen University. In reality she is riding the trains and clocking up random encounters in her new home by the railway tracks. She remembers her ex, Per – the first boyfriend she tells us about, and the first she leaves – as she enters a new world of transient relationships, random sexual experiences and awkward attempts to write.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        November 16, 2015
        In her first novel to be translated into English, Danish novelist Helle introduces new readers to her strikingly spare and introspective style. Twenty-one-year-old Dorte has just settled into a small bungalow near a railway station in the small town of Glumsø outside Copenhagen. There she struggles to find purpose (and a good night’s sleep) while simultaneously reminiscing about her first failed love affair and connecting with those who wander into her new life. Dorte pretends to be a student at Copenhagen University to appease her family, but her aspirations are centered on a vague impression that she should be writing something, even if she’s unsure what form it should take. Helle effectively captures the inner life of a lonely and newly independent young woman whose inner aimlessness may be at odds with the ambition of those around her, and who is just beginning to understand the nature of regret. Little actually happens in this slim novel, but the reader comes away with the impression that the short time Dorte spends in her bungalow will nevertheless serve as the foundation for much of her adult life.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        October 15, 2015
        The English-language debut of one of Denmark's most esteemed--and most popular--authors. A slender book composed of short bursts of what seems to be guileless prose, this is a surprisingly difficult read. It begins where it ends, and in between these two iterations of the same moment, the narrative is made up of disjointed scenes from a young woman's mostly very uneventful life. The story, such as it is, doesn't flow; it accumulates. Dorte Hansen is 20, ostensibly a student of literature at Copenhagen University, and living on her own by the train station in Glums. Any plot synopsis would be both misleadingly dull and antithetical to what the author is doing in this novel. The narration is a particularly austere version of first-person, shorn of the devices--dialogue rich in back story, for example, or detailed internal monologue--that writers generally use to guide readers through their invented worlds. As Dorte's recollections move around in time and space, the reader is left to stumble along behind her, sifting through the minutiae of her life. Dorte explains from the outset that she has thrown most of her work in the garbage, and there's a sly humor in this. Late in the novel, another writer explains how she strips her own texts of anything that seems to lack a purpose. Dorte disagrees. "Sometimes things happen," she argues. The other writer is unpersuaded: "But that's only in reality. And here we're talking about fiction." This particular work of fiction seems to contain nothing but the bits that another writer might have left out. It's the reader's task to find meaning--if there is such a thing--in what Dorte doesn't say, in the pages that she destroyed. A sort of realism that is at once technically stringent and mordantly amusing.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        December 1, 2015
        In best-selling and award-winning Danish novelist Helle's first novel to be translated into English, university student Dorte dates, falls in love, packs up and moves a few times, tries to sleep, watches trains pass her bungalow, and doesn't attend a single class. Independent and fairly clueless Dorte's most-respected counsel is the entertaining, serially dating, intense, and very loving aunt with whom she shares her name. After a boyfriend's mother publishes a short piece by Dorte in a literary journal, Dorte cuts her teeth writing commissioned songs for teachers to sing in class or for kids' birthday parties. By the brief, atmospheric novel's end, Dorte directs her talents to more fulfilling forms of creativity. Readers will feel the haze Dorte exists in as she experiences the restlessness and pushing of boundaries necessary in new adulthood without intellectualizing them and enjoy her endless observations, rendered in Helle's deceptively plain sentences. The quiet and immersive Scandinavian setting, a back-and-forth pace, and the charming, interruptible monotony of companionable narrator Dorte's day-to-day life make Helle's tale a natural choice for those who favor frame over traditional plot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

popularity
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shortDescription
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