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Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Karen Gundersen
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
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Summary
Longlisted for The Pen Translation Prize * A New York Times Globetrotting Pick
A remarkable and heartbreaking debut novel with the lyrical beauty and emotional resonance of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept and the thematic complexity of Asymmetry, that combines fractal mathematics and classical music to explore the infinitely complex patterns of love and the thin border between great passion and great loneliness.
Rakel has always been more comfortable with numbers than with people. A gifted woman with a rare talent for math, she has never mastered the art of making friends. At 19, she moves to Oslo to attend university. There she meets Jakob, a brilliant older teacher who becomes fascinated by Rakel’s quick mind.
Jakob is struck by the similarities between Rakel and Sofja Kovalevskaja, the first woman to become a professor of mathematics, and the subject of the novel he is writing. Just as Kovalevskaja was close to her much older advisor, Rakel and Jakob are drawn to each other and eventually become lovers, although he is already married.
In the years to come, Rakel's academic career soars, but her health declines, and from her bedside she spends hours imagining Sofja’s life while trying to understand her own. With a gaze both naive and mercilessly sharp, she examines what may be her life's only love story, looking for patterns and answers in numbers, music, and literature.
Extraordinarily wise and penetrating, Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine explores the intricacies of the human heart, the complicated equation that is love, and the search to find meaning and connections when you need them most.
Translated from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough
What listeners say about Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine
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- Anselm
- 17-12-21
Poignant and thoughtful
I went into this book wary, knowing that maths isn't my strong suit at all and if the book required it to be, I would struggle. I needn't have worried too much. Yes, mathematical concepts are discussed in some detail during a few sections, but they are always an allegory for something else which is easy enough to pick up on.
So yes, in actual fact I loved this book and was profoundly moved by it. It has something of an unusual structure, the reason for which is elucidated in notes from both the author and the translator at the end. The themes of mathematics, classic music and literature are cleverly woven in. Rakel is an eccentric character, no doubt about that, with a certain naivety and an awkwardness in engaging with the world. But she also has so many endearing traits and is clearly a very capable person - I couldn't help but smile when she took her shoes off and stood on a chair to solve a maths problem because "this one is going to need the whole board".
The reflections made between her life and that of Sofia Kovalevskaya are Rakel's process of forming her own view of the world, and the continual reference to the space in between dark and light, major and minor, love and loneliness makes for a uniquely poignant timbre. (Timbre being a word appropriately used often in this English translation.)
I found the language beautiful and the ideas presented touching and relatable. There was a stretch about 70% in where I felt the book began to wander and I thought perhaps it might get a little dull after a very engaging first two-thirds, but it got back on track after Rakel meets David and I finished the book satisfied.
This won't be a book for everyone. Personally, I loved it.
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