"What is so impressive is [Ørstavik's] ability to capture—with precision, candor and, indeed, tenacity—her shifting sense of self, as the foundations on which it rests crumble with every passing moment."
—Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal
"A slim, devastating . . . novel driven by a search for an answer to this question: what is the truth of another’s death?"
—Kevin Brazil, Times Literary Supplement
"Throughout the brief text, the statement 'I love you/Ti amo' is repeated and exchanged like a tolling bell as the couple both unites and divides in the face of inevitable extremis. Meanwhile, Ørstavik maintains a brutally tender, hyperprecise gaze . . . Dark though its central topic undeniably is, the novel shares a compassionate vision, bridging the gulf between the one who will go on and the one who will not."
—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)
“Ørstavik sketches a spare but capacious meditation on both the shape of [her characters’] relationship and the effort required, practically and emotionally, by the narrator to care for her partner through the end of his life . . . The narrator maintains a controlled—but not cold—distance that only enriches the intimacy throughout . . . Various phrases and riffs on the word love, including ti amo, sustain an incantatory power, and the brevity of this striking text makes its final moments soar.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[Ti Amo] is far more personal than relational . . . The vulnerability that tears through the page is woefully human."
—Neil Czeszejko, Delphic Review
"Ti Amo is novel of passion, commitment and confusion. It is an open window into the complicated, often conflicted, emotions of caregiving without the numbing effects afforded by time and distance . . . [Ti Amo] is more than autobiographical fiction or memoir—it is also a deeply personal tribute to power of love."
—Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts
"The translation by Martin Aitken is perfectly pitched to capture the volatility of the narrator’s thoughts . . . Tender, anguished and truthful, Ti Amo recalls a line from a novel by Duras I read years ago: ‘There are no holidays from love.’"
—Lee Langley, The Spectator
"A transcendently beautiful, poignant autofiction from Orstavik that mirrors the author's experience loving and living with her own husband as he was dying. This reader knows what it's like to care for a seriously ailing partner, and the author's meditations on her experience rang true to me and were very affirming and touching. Ti Amo is a love letter through all the complications that life throws at a partnership. It's one of my favorite books of the year."
—Jennifer Kemnitz, Bookseller Lead at Powell's Bookshop
"This novella, sometimes hard to read for its bleakness but impossible to look away from, shows that even when we know the destination, the journey is still worthwhile."
—John Self, The Guardian
"Ti Amo is a sensual and honest exploration of love, of the heavy feeling permeating the weeks and months before the impending death of a loved one, the memories that engulf you before the imminent parting. Many novels depict the heaviness of the grief that follows the loss of a loved one but this book is unique in the way it renders the awareness of our mortality. Death is not an abstract idea; it is presented as an almost tactile experience."
—Nataliya Deleva, Reading in Translation
"In 120 pages of poetic, honest and heart-searing reflection, translated by Martin Aitken, an unnamed woman charts the experience of caring for her dying husband as he refuses to acknowledge his terminal diagnosis. It is a book about intimacy, and the beauty and deep challenge of loving another human being — and how our connections to one another can be both rock solid and as fragile as glass."
—Enuma Okoro, Financial Times, "Best Books of 2022 List"
"Ørstavik is an excellent writer . . . Ti Amo, as the title suggests, is a letter to a lost love, a story told directly to her husband, but also an absorbing, fictionalised account of the final days of a marriage."
—Tony Malone, Tony's Reading List
“A transcendently beautiful, poignant autofiction from Ørstavik that mirrors the author's experience loving and living with her own husband as he was dying. This reader knows what it's like to care for a seriously ailing partner, and the author's meditations on her experience rang true to me and were very affirming and touching. Ti Amo is a love letter through all the complications that life throws at a partnership. It's one of my favorite books of the year.”
—Jennifer R, Powell's Bookstore
★ 2022-06-22
A husband and wife living in Italy confront the man's imminent death from cancer in a meditation on relationships, loss, and identity in every facet of existence.
Noted Norwegian writer Ørstavik’s new, novella-length work hints at autobiography, introducing an unnamed narrator who is a Norwegian novelist relocated to Milan, as the author has done, with an oeuvre that includes Love, one of Ørstavik’s own books. The narrator is deferring her next novel to write this penetrating chronicle of her partner’s decline. When did his cancer begin, she wonders, tracing their four years together, the trips, the timing of his proposal (after his diagnosis), and settling on spring 2018 when “the energy went out of you.” Now, in 2020, he is dealing with rapidly advancing illness and extreme pain while she is tending him, writing (her way of existing), and confronting their differences at a crucial junction. Why does he choose not to discuss his death, less than 12 months away? How much strength is he using to avoid knowing? Throughout the brief text, the statement “I love you/Ti amo” is repeated and exchanged like a tolling bell as the couple both unites and divides in the face of inevitable extremis. Meanwhile, Ørstavik maintains a brutally tender, hyperprecise gaze: “For a long time just looking at you was painful to me, I couldn’t look at you without the knowledge that you’re going to die….And even though it’s not that acute anymore, it still won’t pass, now it’s quieter in a way, normal almost, death has become an attendant presence.” Yet, dark though its central topic undeniably is, the novel shares a compassionate vision, bridging the gulf between the one who will go on and the one who will not: “What I’ve been writing is the most truthful way I’ve been able to be with you, with all that cannot be said between us in our days together.”
A remarkably frank and finely sieved account of two people approaching the ultimate parting of the ways.
