Our own children
By Trude Marstein
It’s June and Anja and her boyfriend Pål are on their way to the smallholding in Sweden that Anja still co-owns with her ex-husband Ivar. It’s going to be a weekend of hard work –…
Description
It’s June and Anja and her boyfriend Pål are on their way to the smallholding in Sweden that Anja still co-owns with her ex-husband Ivar. It’s going to be a weekend of hard work – the cladding needs to be cleaned and painted. Ivar and his partner Solveig are there too, as are all the children.
When Lotte heard about joint weekend of work at the smallholding, she said:
‘I don’t get why you’re coming too, I don’t get why you and Dad are pretending to be friends.’ We were eating dinner, her stabbing a meatball with her fork. She’s fourteen.
Praise
In her best, bravest and saddest book to date, Trude Marstein is heading towards a level of her own in Norwegian contemporary literature.
Preben Jordal, AftenpostenSuperb, relentless family drama. [...] The reader is left on tenterhooks as Trude Marstein gathers the modern family for a weekend of work at their smallholding.
Marta Norheim, NRKTrude Marstein’s wise, never resting gaze puts the contradictions in our relationships, and in our love for our children, on display.
Turid Larsen, DagsavisenThe cabin weekend from hell
Maria Årolilja Rø, AdresseavisenTrude Marstein is a master at creating fiction characters who are mildly unpleasant. The title of her new novel, One’s Own Children, immediately sparks expectations about the conspiratorial cliché ‘my children/other people’s children’. Marstein’s ability to capture modern lifestyle problems – in this case stepchildren and stepparents – is highly relatable.
Inger Bentzrud, DagbladetHow do we grasp who we are when the key to understanding is something as fleeting as our own desire? Marstein depicts societal changes from within, as the stories of individuals, through strong, vulnerable, serially monogamous, heterosexual narrators. They don’t even come close to having a perspective of their own or other people’s lives. They tell their stories nevertheless. The result is writing of a high literary standard, full of trivial details about everyday life for Norwegians – and insights into social relations.
Tom Egil Hverven, Klassekampen
