David has lost his memory. A newspaper advert appears asking friends and relatives to share their memories of him. Three respond: his two closest teenage friends, and his stepfather, now estranged, from his backwater hometown of Namsos. Their reminiscences of teenage nihilism and rebellion, the eroticism and uncertainties of first love, and intense experiments in art and music, are framed by present day scenes of lives run aground on thwarted ambition and intimacy. Told in letters, interleaved with internal monologues and commentaries, Encircling provides a dark, searingly honest portrait of life at the edges of provincial Norway. Yet for all its apparent bleakness, Tiller's remarkable opening novel of the Encircling Trilogy pulses with humanity and truth. As each narrative colours and reshapes the last, the enigma that is David continues to intrigue us.
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