Doing Good
Critics' Prize 2006. P.O. Enquist Prize 2006
In the second half of the book it goes back to Saturday morning. It is a beautiful composition, very elegantly mastered, and at the same time a very good read, showing a mosaic of destinies that together make up a large picture, a picture of life itself. Marstein is indeed a literary voice to notice.
As one of the critics said: “Outstanding, teeming ant hive novel which above all impresses through the perfection of the writer's handicraft. The book is so to speak a perfect composition. It moves and involves as a collective account.”
Saturday night has just turned to Sunday as Peter approaches the town where he is about to start a new job. In a train travelling in the opposite direction Peter catches sight of his ex-lover Karoline leaving the town. Peter and Karoline are just two of the hundred and twenty characters that inhabit Trude Marstein’s daringly constructed novel, Doing Good. This is a novel in which the city and time create the framework, and the five senses create the composition. Shifting effortlessly from narrator to narrator, this novel captures the most diverse characters and environments, all within a small Norwegian town and in the space of one July weekend. A book about passion and death, work and escape, drunkenness and reconciliation, bewilderment and reflection. And ultimately about how, as human beings, in the midst of all life throws at us, we struggle to do good.
"This is a – page-turner! A text that takes advantage of all the rich possibilities that the composition of a novel offers."
Per Olof Enquist
"Marstein demonstrates a solid control over and distinct flair for the way people talk ... Doing Good displays convincing craftsmanship with implicit contemporary diagnoses."
Dagens Næringsliv
"And out of this extremely broad perspective emerges a picture of the banal, random, tragic, and perhaps even beautiful aspects of life for people who live close to one another and who, willingly or not, touch each other’s lives."
NRK P2
"Stories and narrators branch off in every direction in what is gradually revealed to be a meticulously devised network; new connections and perspectives are constantly appearing to the astonished reader ... Technically brilliant... the book is almost perfectly composed in a two-part structure that slowly approaches the point from which it began."
Aftenposten
"Sly and entertaining ... Marstein has a sharp eye and writes a clear and unpretentious prose with a good sense of momentum."
Dagbladet
"A multitude of I’s – Trude Marstein is an author with an absolute control of all her instruments. After having read her collective novel Doing good, I want more."
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden
"Trude Marstein is yet another young Norwegian acquaintance worth worshipping. Her first novel in Danish is quite simply excellent."
Politiken, Denmark
"Seduced, satisfied and entranced after having completed the reading of this very attractive novel."
Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark
"Trude Marstein’s precise observation and unpretentious narrative voice are particular qualities in her already established oevre. In Doing Good this fully comes into its own. The setting is a very hot weekend in July in an inland town in Norway with the Riverside Hotel and a 50th anniversary party as a connecting element. From this point 118 destinies are whirled out. The literary technique may be resembled to Perec’s Life A User's Manual. Through the contstantly moving perspective, Marstein focuses on themes like betrayal, love, desire, death, escape, loneliness, reconciliation. Out of this wide perspective grows an image of and a feeling for the banal, the accidental, the tragic and even the beautiful aspects of life, between people who live close to each other, people who influence each other’s life, with or against their own will. Trude Marstein has created grand piece of epic art."
The Critics' Prize jury statement, 2006
Sample translation is available: