Allergic To Fish

A pathetic human goes on a journey of self-discovery and discovers she is pathetic.

Allergic to Fish, by Andrea Andreas-Andersson
Ecological Publishing Co-operative of Christiania, 120 pp, 795kr, August 2018

Ever since the benighted Elizabeth Gilbert set down her pen on the utterly unpalatable Eat Pray Love, every bourgeois idiot with (or without) a penchant for writing has decided that their own story of struggle against the very minor indignities of adult human existence is worthy of 120 pages and 795kr of smug, self-congratulatory prose. It was, then, inevitable that our local purveyors of unmitigated dross would eventually get in on this fake-gold gold-rush, and so we find ourselves holding a copy of Allergic to Fish by Andrea Andreas-Andersson.

The conceited conceit of this very silly book is that Andreas-Andersson, recently turned 40 and otherwise content with her largely banal life as a copy editor at an unnamed "well-loved Norwegian newspaper" (quite obviously Aftenposten), suddenly discovers that she is, in fact, Allergic to Fish. The soul-searching crisis this sets off in our heroine (anti-heroine? a-heroine?) is as predictable as it is implausible. Is there anything more emblematic of Generation Y-ne than to take an occurrence that is, at most, a minor but tolerable inconvenience to one's dinner-planning and drag it, kicking and screaming, through 120 pages of pseudo-intellectual self-reflection? (No, there is not).

This would be bad enough were it not for the horrific, immoral moral that this book unleashes on our sometimes-impressionable youth. 80 pages in, having decided that she needs a holiday to treat her jangling nerves (the money to pay for which is never mentioned, but which one can only assume came from Mama and Papa Andreas-Andersson, because little Andrea herself quit her job 9 months previously and has spent all her money on several unhelpful homeopathic therapies, one involving her paying 1000kr an hour to sit in a room and pretend to be a fish), our herowhine flies herself out to beloved Bømlo to stare at the majestic sea and make peace with her very, very untroubling demons.

Here, in one of the few understandable and supportable moments of the book, Andreas-Andersson spies a strong, stoic, untroubled Bømlovian fisherman standing by the water and promptly falls in love with him. Given her absolute lack of a personality, the fact that he reciprocates can only be ascribed to poor eyesight, poor judgement, or ill-character on the part of the mother who raised him.

Shameful to say, things from there only get worse. The notorious AAA embraces her fellow and promptly develops an embarrassing rash, due to his recent contact with various majestic Norwegian salmon.* Instead of seeing this as the clear signal it is that he should dump this woman from his life like 60kg of rotting algae**, the traitorous "Bømlovian" (he does not deserve that honorific) moves to Oslo with his ladyfriend to open an origami store.

I am not, myself, of course, Allergic To Fish, but I am allergic to East Norwegian onanism, to such an extent that this useless screed gave me a rash. Perhaps I should write a book about that....

*Special! Smoked Norwegian salmon is now available via the BRB store. Please send a letter to

Bømlo Review of Books
Kulturhuset
Bømlo
NORWAY

for further details

**Special! Rotting algae now also available via the BRB store