Norwegian title: Sinne
Happy Sunday friends!
January has flown by so incredibly fast! I don’t quite understand what happened but I’ve been listening a lot to the final episodes of the podcast Pottergenerasjonen which is a student podcast about Harry Potter in Norwegian so if you’re a Potterhead and speak one of the Scandinavian languages I recommend that you check it out! Speaking of Harry Potter, the last book I finished is full of HP quotes which is just brilliant! This is a book I grew to love very quickly and I recommend it for grown-ups and teenagers alike! This book was recommended by Malin, aka @readygoread , on Instagram, and this lady knows her books so when she is over the moon for something you’d bet its gonna be good! The synopsis is borrowed from Goodreads and translated by me:
ADHD, love and friendship. 15 year old Synne has ADHD and she feels it bubbles and boil inside her. She yells at teachers and students alike and is often sent to the schools councilor office. The councilor want her to start taking medication to control her ADHD and Synne doesn’t quite know how to feel about this. Luckily, amidst everything, Synne has her best friend Torunn but two new students is making things difficult: Kine who is a young influencer with tons of followers on Instagram and the mystical and handsome Johan who must drink O’boy and eat bread with jam every day.
Angry is a fantastic book. I love the fact that it talks about something that we know is out there but people still seem to forget. When I was young I remember ADHD being a sickness that made whoever had it annoying, loud and full of energy all the time. Now, in a more educated world with a more educated me, ADHD is something that makes that person differently wired than I am. Not in a bad way just different, just like my boyfriend is different from me, and my friends. This might sound naive if you work in the health sector or you have it yourself but when I was young it was something wrong with you if you had ADHD and now that I’m older I don’t view it as something wrong, but more as a trait that’s a part of who you are. This last point is what I think Ingebrigtsen does an AMAZING job at portraying in this book. We get to see the quiet sides of Synne and the explosive ones. We experience Synne when her body is itching all over and when she is able to sit still and watch a movie, often the Harry Potter movies.
At the same time we also get to witness how people around Synne treats her, how she treats them and how both parties views and experience the treatment. When her brother says ‘It doesn’t always have to be about you’ I agree with him but I can also see why Synne doesn’t quite understand what or why he says this. The dialogues in this book adds to the amazing reading experience! There is such a development in Synne from when we first meet her to when we leave her, and being a teenagers who isn’t viewed as «normal» has never been more difficult than in the world of smartphones. The whole social media thing is also a part of this complicated, wonderful, and frustrating world that is Synne’s daily life and yet we see more of the ‘traditional’ worries of teenagers like not being liked, not being invited to parties, and so fourth. This book really took me back to when I was 15. Like Synne I got my first boyfriend at the time and I remember all the excitement and confusion that entailed, so how it feels with all this and an addition of ADHD I don’t want to know. I had more than enough with being «normal» at this age! This is why I believe books like Angry is so important! There is such a great potential for education through this type of story and I think Angry presents the ADHD traits way better than academic books where I have stumbled upon the term. Read it – love it – share it!
To add to all this amazingness, Angry also presents a lot of brilliant HP quotes, in Norwegian none the less, and its been a while since I’ve read the books in Norwegian which is why it was a great blast from the past! Speaking of blasts from the past, at the beginning of one of the chapters I found a slang expression I haven’t seen in almost 10 years, ‘schmø kæbe’, and it made me laugh so much! I remember it being used when I was in secondary school and that’s like…..13 years ago haha. I just love it when books brings back memories from your own life that you’ve almost forgotten but you get the chance to refresh them because a book reminds you of it!
Angry is a read it – love it – share it! book for me. I’m crossing everything that I have that it will be translated because this is a book I believe the world needs, and its always fun to get more Norwegian authors into the big brave world! If you read it in Norwegian don’t be discouraged by it being in New Norwegian, after the first few pages you won’t register it the slightest. Angry will be among my top three books for 2021 and I hope, when you read it, that you’ll grow to love Synne as much as I did!
Published: 2020
Genre: Young Adult
Theme: ADHD, friendship, love, teenage years
– The Book Reader
TheBookReader 