Description
As Oslo slowly emerges from a period of crippling austerity, ‘Echoes of the City’ shows how small, almost imperceptible acts of kindness and compassion, and tiny shifts in fortune, can change the lives of many. At the centre of the novel are Maj and Ewald Kristoffersen and their son Jesper, their lives closely entwined and overlapping with their neighbours’ on Kirkeveien. When the butcher’s son Jostein is knocked down in a traffic accident and loses his hearing, Jesper promises to be his ears in the world. The arrival of a long-awaited telephone is a major event for Maj and Ewald, and meanwhile their neighbour, recently widowed Fru Vik, tentatively takes up with the owner of the bookshop near the cemetery.