{"id":1200,"date":"2012-01-19T17:04:37","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T16:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1200"},"modified":"2016-01-23T18:58:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T17:58:47","slug":"mirja-unge-it-was-just-yesterday-comma-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1200","title":{"rendered":"Mirja Unge, <em>It Was Just Yesterday<\/em> (Comma Press)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mirja Unge\u2019s debut collection of short stories achieved considerable success when it was published in Sweden.  The sixteen stories that make up the collection bear striking similarities and preoccupations. Largely written as first-person narratives, they articulate the female adolescent view on life and relationships.<br \/>\n<br \/>The prose is sharp and abrupt and Unge does away with conventional rules of punctuation or dialogue. Her narrative mimics the fractured emotional world of her female protagonists, who are mainly weary and vulnerable, out of sorts with themselves and the people around them. There are flashes of vivid visual brilliance. In \u2018Four Hundred Kronor,\u2019 the opening lines describe the protagonist\u2019s coat, as it \u2018swung round her legs,\u2019 and \u2018her handbag gleaming and the hand that held it hard.\u2019<br \/>\n<br \/>Unge\u2019s stories portray a cityscape that is perpetually cloaked in winter and where sex, violence, drugs and poverty are symptoms of alienation and estrangement. In \u2018Oranges\u2019 for instance, a young girl listlessly receives some oranges as an eighteenth birthday present from her divorced father. In the title story, \u2018It was just Yesterday,\u2019 another school girl passively describes how she casually lost her virginity to a stranger, while the \u2018My Bruv\u2019s Had Enough,\u2019 has a girl confronting an old drug addict brother who has escaped from hospital.<br \/>\n<br \/><em>It Was Just Yesterday<\/em> is both atmospheric and menacing. We are always aware of danger lurking with no possibilities or redemption or resolve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mirja Unge\u2019s debut collection of short stories achieved considerable success when it was published in Sweden. The sixteen stories that make up the collection bear striking similarities and preoccupations. Largely written as first-person narratives, they articulate the female adolescent view on life and relationships. The prose is sharp and abrupt and Unge does away with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[76,180],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mirja Unge, It Was Just Yesterday (Comma Press) - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1200\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mirja Unge, It Was Just Yesterday (Comma Press) - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mirja Unge\u2019s debut collection of short stories achieved considerable success when it was published in Sweden. 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