Surrounded by a vivid and memorable cast of characters-aspiring pop musicians, Caribbean-obsessed psychologists, death-haunted photographers, girls who dream of anonymous men falling in love with them on bus trips, and even Buzz Aldrin himself-"Harstad combines formal play and linguistic ferocity with a searing emotional directness" (Dedi Felman, Words Without Borders) to bring Mattias to the realization that he cannot always blend into the background. he novel's finest moments wrap you up in communion with Mattias, as if you are spending a quiet afternoon with an old friend, chatting but mostly thinking" ( Three Percent). Through Harstad's "delectably light but nonetheless impactful prose. From there, Brage Award-winning author and playwright Johan Harstad's debut novel-previously published to great success in eleven countries with its first English-language appearance in June 2011-tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Stavanger, Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon: the man who was willing to stand in Neil Armstrong's shadow in order to work, diligently and humbly, for the success of the Apollo 11 mission. In Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, readers follow a man who wishes not to be followed, a man who, after a series of personal and professional disasters, finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands, population only a few thousand, a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there. Using the lunar-like landscape of the Faroe Islands as a backdrop, the novel deals with their attempt at finding a balance between being second best and anonymous without going into total isolation.A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Title of 2011 Not everyone wants to star in a movie, some just want to watch the movie." After losing both his girlfriend and his job, he accidentally ends up on the Faroe Islands, where he meets people with the same ideals as himself, living in a psychiatric halfway house. He has an extraordinary talent as a singer, but refuses to become a singer in his friend's semi-famous band, arguing that "not everyone wants to be a leader, some just want to be the secretary. He loves his job as a gardener at a local nurseryso much that he often comes in early to just sit in the quiet of the garden alone. He loves his girlfriend, Helle, who he has dated for twelve years. He looks upon astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, as his role model, and tries to live up to what he thinks Aldrin would do in any given situation. When we meet 29-year-old Mattias, the narrator of Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion, he is happy and satisfied with his life.
The book deals with a thirty-year-old gardener, Mattias, near obsessed with the thought of being second best, the greatest number two, much to his girlfriend's grievance. Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You in All The Confusion? (Original title: Buzz Aldrin, hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet?) is a novel by the Norwegian author Johan Harstad, published in 2005.
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