Hafni Says

Reviews

"Surprisingly devoid of ego, and deeply thoughtful." — The Paris Review

"Helle Helle surpasses herself in this tale of shame and screw-ups. Like few writers, she manages to reproduce herself in such a way that each new novel buds from the one(s) before it, not as a clone or a one-to-one copy, but as one of those small wonders that life bestows upon us. A kind of literary-evolutionary self-propagation, a self-refining process of cell division, the art of writing at its very best." — Berlingske

"One of my favorite Danish writers—she’s the master." — Olga Ravn, The Guardian

"Hafni Says is artfully constructed, the language is spare yet refined, full of half-sentences and gaps, with pauses for glances and gestures, for revelations, joys, and disappointments. This is poetry, compressed storytelling that builds, through a hundred small scenes, into a sweeping novel. Helle Helle crafts this female tragicomedy with unburdened elegance." — Neue Zürcher Zeitung

"Off-kilter domestic encounters characterize her disquieting fiction." — Thomas Meaney, Granta

"The delicacy of the comedy, the melodrama of Hafni’s aches and pains, the brief friendships and wild misunderstandings, the lasting mortification of a faux pas from back in the day—only the Danish novelist Helle Helle can make this human and not pathological...A striking tale in which capitalization seems too emphatic for precarious living and suffering in a minor, muted key." — Booklist

"Compact, witty and episodic—written in short sections that mix exquisite attention to detail with impressionistic interludes. You read Hafni Says like the smørrebrœd it describes: in small delectable portions, nodding along to its observational precision, chewing over its subtle, layered flavors, wistfully yearning for more when it's all over so suddenly." — Matthew Janney, Financial Times

"A simple story that contains a complex exploration of self-determination, loneliness, and ordinary luck...Over the course of Hafni’s meandering journey, the reader sees her experiment with different models of how to be—the woman who slips on pumps before she teeters into a hotel, the woman who lingers in a bare-bones hostel for the pleasure of her simple room, the woman pursued by “eternal embarrassment” for social gaffes committed in the distant past. All of these, and more, are Hafni. " — Kirkus Reviews

"Hafni Says is close to perfection...Conversational, acerbic, melancholy and so full of everyday truths and observations that it is difficult to resist the urge to underline every phrase." — Catherine Taylor, Irish Times

"In this wry, piquant book, a kind of road novel without epiphany or climactic resolution, what matters isn’t what happens as such but the ways in which sensitivity and self-consciousness can crowd and shape a person’s life." — The Saturday Paper