A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middleaged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controverdsial modern classic, Will and Testament 'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed and back in Oslo after a long absence as she prepares for a retrospective of her art.The subject of her work is motherhood and some of her more controversial paintings have brought aboiut a dramatic rift between parent and child. This new p... continue
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION “The cumulative effect is hypnotic. Hjorth works finely parsed and brilliant variations on her unrelenting theme of familial mistrust and misunderstanding.” –New York Times “A prickly, persuasive novel. Like Knausgaard, Hjorth is writing against repression, against the taboo on telling things as they really are. But he urges us to look at dead bodies; she forces us to regard bleeding souls.” –New Yorker Four siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a dispute over her parents... continue