Novella a Day in May 2025: No.5

/ madamebibilophile

Minna Needs Rehearsal Space – Dorthe Nors (2013, transl. Misha Hoekstra 2014) 89 pages

I really enjoyed Dorthe Nors’ Mirror, Shoulder, Signal as the final novella when I first undertook this month-long challenge back in 2018. Since then I’ve read her short story collection Karate Chop, and was delighted to find Minna Needs Rehearsal Space in my beloved charity bookshop. I think it has been published in editions with Karate Chop, but this Pushkin Press edition was standalone.

This is definitely a novella where the style will alienate some readers. It’s written entirely in a series of short sentences.

“Minna walks around in bare feet.

The flat is full of notes.

Bach stands in the window.

Brahms stands on the coffee table.

The flat’s too small for a piano, but

A woman should have room for a flute.”

At first I wasn’t sure I could read a whole novella like this, but then I suddenly clicked with the rhythm and it seemed a lot less jarring.

Minna is a musician living in Copenhagen, trying to write a “paper sonata” and struggling to find a place to work. She is struggling more widely too: with ambivalence towards potential motherhood; with her tightly-wound sister; with her boyfriend who has just dumped her by text.

This spurs Minna to do some dumping of her own, as she unfriends people on social media.

“Minna eats a cracker.

Karin’s missive awaits.

Karin wants to be nasty.

Karin wants to upset her applecart, but

Minna’s cart has no apples.”

She ends up packing Ingmar Bergman’s Billeder as the director becomes almost a Greek chorus/silent interlocutor, when Minna heads for Bornholm and the sea.

The short sentences act as constant present-tense status updates, a commentary on our online living. Yet by piling on the banal observations, gradually a more subtle picture emerges between the sentences. Minna’s frustrations and vulnerabilities shine through.  It’s a brave approach which for me worked well, but I already knew I liked Nors’ observations, characterisation and humour.

Minna Needs Rehearsal Space is a reminder to look beyond what is immediate to a whole picture; one that is always changing in the present and is much more complex than the surface would have us believe.

“Minna’s broken heart dwells in the breast of an optimist.”

24 thoughts on “Novella a Day in May 2025: No.5”

  2. Thanks for reminding me of this author. Based upon your review, I find this quite appealing; it is certainly an interesting approach.

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    • It is interesting and quite a brave step. I can imagine it would alienate a lot of readers. But the reason for doing it is clear – it’s not just for the sake of being different. I hope you enjoy it if you give it a try!

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  8. You really are doing me a service this week – all books that I’ve been thinking about! This was on my wishlist but I took it off, after leafing through it – I wasn’t sure it would work for me. But I like to hear that it clicked with you after a while, so maybe I need to try again.

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  9. I don’t know if you would have seen the sweet-natured dating show from Australia, which airs on NF as “Love on the Spectrum” in NorthAmerica, but one of the young men on the show, who is looking for a special someone, has a habit of sort-of growling when something his father says to/about him doesn’t suit him. That is the sound you can imagine me making whenever you mention your precious charity shop. /winks

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