Jostein Gaarder: "The Orange Girl"
The book
Georg was 15, his father died eleven years ago. Georg gets a surprising post from him. A letter his father wrote when he was already terminally ill and spent all those years undiscovered in an old children's cart. In it, the father Georg tells of his first great love, which he meets as a young medical student in the Oslo tram: a girl with dimpled smile and a huge paper bag full of oranges. But at the end of the ride the overwhelmed student knows nothing more than that of her? and the search begins. Jostein Gaarder does not shy away from the big feelings to tell this story. And asks us all what we would prefer: to lose the luck? or never experienced it.
A deeply moving book, playful and philosophical at the same time. An ode to life? and one of the most beautiful farewell letters ever written.
The author
Jostein Gaarder was born in 1952 in Oslo. He was a teacher of philosophy, religion and literature before becoming a writer in 1982. In 1991, his bestseller "Sofie's World", which was actually intended as a children's book, was released, selling more than twelve million copies worldwide. Jostein Gaarder lives with his family in Oslo.
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Leseprobe "The Orange Girl"
My father died eleven years ago. I was only four then. I had never expected to hear from him again, but now we're writing a book together. These are the very first lines in this book, and I write them, but my dad will still come to the train. He finally has the most to tell. I do not know how well I can remember my father. Presumably, I just think I remember him because I've looked at all the photos of him so many times.
Only with a reminder am I quite sure; that she is real, I mean. It's about something that happened when we sat outside on the terrace and looked at the stars. In a photo, my father and I are sitting on the old leather sofa in the living room. He seems to tell something funny. We still have the sofa, but my dad is not there anymore.
In another picture, we've made ourselves comfortable in the green rocking chair on the glass veranda. The picture has been hanging here since my dad's death. I'm sitting in the green rocking chair now. I try not to rock, because I want to write my thoughts in a thick copybook. And later I will enter everything into my dad's old computer. There's something to tell about this computer as well, I'll come back to that later.
It has always been strange to have these many old pictures. They belong in another time. In my room is a whole album with pictures of my father. It seems a bit scary to have so many photos of a person who is no longer alive. We also have my father on video. I almost get goose bumps when I hear him speak. My dad had a really loud droning voice. Maybe videos of people who are no longer there or who are no longer with us, as my grandmother puts it, should be banned. It does not feel right to spy on the dead. On some videos I can also hear my own voice. She sounds thin and tall. And reminds me of a bird cub.
That's how it was then: my father was the bass, I delivered the treble.
On a video I sit on my father's shoulders and try to pluck the star from the Christmas tree top. I'm only a year old, but I almost made it anyway. When Mama looks at videos of my father and me, it happens that she sinks back in her chair and laughs, even though she was behind the video camera and filmed. I do not think it's right that she laughs about videos with my dad. I do not think he liked this idea. He might have said that was against the rules.
On another video, my father and I are sitting in front of our holiday home on Fjellstølen in the Easter sun and everyone has half an orange in their hand. I try to suck the juice out of mine without peeling it. My dad thinks of other oranges, I'm pretty sure.
Immediately after these Easter holidays, my father realized that something was wrong with him. He was ill for over half a year and was worried that he would have to die soon. I think he knew that would happen.
Mom often told me that my dad was particularly sad because he had to die before he really got to know me.My grandma says so too, just in a somewhat mystical way.
Grandma always had a weird voice when she spoke to me about my dad. That may not be a miracle. My grandparents have lost a grown son. I do not know what that feeling is. Luckily, they also have a son who lives. But grandma never laughs when she looks at my father's old pictures. She sits very devoutly in front of it. By the way, she says that herself.
My father had decided that you could not really talk to a boy of three and a half years. Today I understand that, and as you read this book, you'll soon understand. I have a picture of my father lying on a hospital bed. His face has become very thin. I sit on his knees and he holds my hands so I do not fall on him. He tries to smile at me. The picture was taken just a few weeks before his death. I wish I had not, but where I already have it, I can not throw it away. I can not even resist that I have to look at it again and again.
Today I'm fifteen, or fifteen years and three weeks, to be exact. My name is Georg Røed and I live in Humlevei in Oslo, together with my mother, Jørgen and Miriam. Jørgen is my new father, but I only call him Jørgen. Miriam is my little sister. She is only one and a half years old and thus really too small to speak properly with her.
Of course, there are no old pictures or videos showing Miriam with my dad. Miriam's father is Jørgen. I was my father's only child. At the very end of this book I will tell some really interesting things about Jørgen. I can not say anything about it yet, but who reads will see. After my father's death, my grandparents came to us and helped Mama get organized in his things. But they did not find anything important: something my father had written before they took him to the hospital. Nobody knew about it then. The story of the "Orange Girl" did not appear until Monday of this week. Granny wanted to get something out of the tool shed and found her in the upholstery of the red children's car in which I had sat as a little boy.
How she got there is a little mystery. It can not have been pure coincidence, because the story my father wrote when I was three and a half years old has something to do with the cart. That's not to say it's a typical childrens carreer story, it's not really that, but my dad wrote it for me. He wrote the story of the "Orange Girl" so I could read it if I were big enough to understand it. He wrote a letter to the future.
If it was really my dad who put the many sheets that make history into the upholstery of the old cart, then he must have been convinced that mail always arrives. I've thought that as a precaution, you should examine all the old things very carefully before taking them to the flea market or throwing them into a container. I almost dare not imagine what you could find on a garbage dump of old letters and similar things. One thing I've been thinking about over the past few days. I think there should be a much simpler way to send a letter into the future than to push it into the cradle of a baby carriage.
