Genre- Bildungsroman, Fiction in verse, coming-of-age
Rating- 5/5
“I know I know I say
it’s a real mess
but it’s my body
it’s like it only exists
when it touches his
the rest of the time I’m this haze drifting about“
New Passengers was my fourth WITmonth read and it is the first verse novel I’ve ever read and one that I loved. I finished this in one sitting today. The book is divided into months (August-December) and follows the unnamed narrator’s discovery of herself, her young feminine identity and what it means to be an adult. The novel starts with the narrator boarding the daily commute train from Copenhagen to Naestved where she’s landed a new job as a teacher in a school. On the train, she meets a married man to whom she is drawn irrevocably; and what follows are events through which the narrator confronts her own identity coupled with her relationship with this man. In between all of this exists her id- which does not let her extricate herself from this man and, her ego- which reminds her of the uneasiness and the immorality of infidelity.
The book flows with such lucidness and that too with sparse words- fiction that reads and looks like poetry. The translation was beautiful and captured all the nuances. Evocative, perspicuous and fact-paced like that of a train but also reflective, New Passengers is an amalgamation of love, reflections on adulthood and feminine identity in the contemporary world. I think the design of the book speaks so much for itself with the rectangle(s) on the chapter page that somewhat resembled commuter train carriages. With each progressing month, there is an extra rectangle/ carriage and by December (the last month), it was a complete commuter train. For me, this resembled closure and the start of a new adulthood.
I loved the coming-of-age story. I’m not sure but I think if I had to fit this into a genre, it would definitely be bildungsroman. This was definitely one of my favourite books in fiction this year and from what I can tell, will continue to be a favourite for days to come!
New Passengers was first published in Danish in 2017 titled ‘Nye rejsende’ and later translated into English by Misha Hoekstra which will be out on 10th September 2020! The book won the Englush PEN award and also ‘Bogforum’s Debutantpris’, the prize awarded each year for Denmark’s best literary debut.
Literature, Poetry and Reading. 