“Norwegian artists can write! Mathias Faldbakken proves it with Poor Thing, but my favourite this year is Lars Elling’s The Princes of Pauper’s Pond, a first novel with joyful writing that shows how precisely and playfully good artists can paint an inner life. Here also with words.”
Andreas Wiese, Dagbladet, Books of the Year 2022
“Reading Lars Elling’s brilliant, fairy-tale-like, deeply original novel is pure joy. … it’s here, in the portrait of Oslo’s own wilderness, that Elling proves to be a fully developed poet. Whether it’s in the description of the beautiful, but tragic life of the mayfly, or in the more macabre, but also deeply humorous depiction of a veritable frog massacre! … Lars Elling has surely read and learned from both Mark Twain, Per Petterson and Gunnar Larsen. He is poetic and sparkling, serious and silly at the same time. … It’s a long time since I read a Norwegian novel with more vibrant prose and more fascinating characters than in The Princes of Pauper’s Pond. The story is bursting with creative turns of phrase, wild stories and almost visual images. The author has an unusually rich vocabulary, and the fact that Lars Elling originally is a painter can above all be seen in his skills in describing nature. He excels in elaborate, impressionistic formulations”
Sindre Hovdenakk, VG, 6/6 stars
“A solid and impressive first novel about the adventures of two brothers in the Nordmarka forest in the summers of 1911-1914 … It’s a story written with energy and told in the only way it could be told. Every scene seems to be chosen in order to conjure up, flesh out and push the story forward. And everything happens in a prose so precise and carefully chiseled that the novel provides both a portrait of an age and an elegy for a lost world. … It’s a book about Oslo more than a hundred years ago and about Oslo in the 1980s. A novel that makes you want to sleep in a tent and go fishing. But above all it’s a tribute to a world that is now disappearing. A world where you knew the names of birds, animals and plants, where things were our friends and could be repaired if they broke.”
Preben Jordal, Aftenposten
“Thrilling! … a magical, captivating story about brotherly love and closeness to nature … It’s all written in an outstanding prose. It’s a joy to read Elling’s image rich, creative prose … a magical book about a magical universe. In Bergen we have an expression: Månebedotten. It means to be surprised or also awestruck, but usually in a positive way. Simply overwhelmed. Reading this novel produces such a feeling”
Atle Nielsen, Bok365, 6/6 stars
“A new, strong, surprising voice … Lars Elling impresses mightily in his first novel … a true delight to read. This is the kind of novel that I have been reading extra slowly, in order for it to last for as long as possible”
Tor Hammerø, Nettavisen, 6/6 stars
“A powerful novel about the coming of age of an artist … an unusually moving story about a dialogue across generations … It’s a pleasure to read”
Kjetil Røed, Vårt Land
“With a confident narrative hand, Elling gives us a historical perspective with mythical dimensions, parallell to an artist’s coming of age novel that seems close to the author’s own story … [detailed nature descriptions] provide the frame for and serve as a stage in the novel. With its very own (a painter’s, in fact) perceptiveness to the life and magic of insects, these descriptions stand out not only because they’re beautiful, but because they indirectly comment on the circumstances of the two brothers’ life … What impresses me the most in this well-crafted debut, is how Elling’s descriptions of the magical life of the forest and insects is linked to the novel’s main motive”
Margunn Vikingstad, Morgenbladet
“Elling is at his very best when he is inside the grandfather’s story. When the two boys, as if in an east end version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer bring a fishing rod, spinning reel, tarpaulin , brewery bike and map and go out into the Nordmarken Forest. … There’s a lot of interesting sociology in The Princes of Pauper’s Pond … It’s as if you see both the city and the forest around it a little sharper … There’s lots to enjoy in The Princes of Pauper’s Pond. Put the book in your backpack along with pipe tobacco and a pocket flask, and let it be a part of your own cabin library – whether it’s in the mountains, by the sea, in the forest or in the city”
Knut Hoem, NRK Radio
“an interesting novel with layers upon layers of history under a burning passion to learn to draw … The boys’ expedition takes them to the building site of a charcoal stack and to timber floating, with additional layers of suspenseful story … Lars Elling’s debut shrewdly gives the reader the feeling that events from more than a hundred years ago, close to the outbreak of a world war, could just as well happen here and now”
Tom Egil Hverven, Klassekampen
“The book’s great strength is its poetic language … Elling challenges the reader, but makes sure to write in a way that keeps the reader interested. The book oozes knowledge, whether it’s about historical circumstances, the energy saving killing technique of the constrictor, the ecosystem on a leaf, or how the left and right halves of the brain work together when an artist draws”
Joakim Tjøstheim, Dagbladet
