Reviews

Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth

fleurleestboeken's review

dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

tarrowood's review against another edition

4.0

What an intriguing read that explores the depths of grief of losing one’s mother, not to death, but due to your actions — and your inability to accept your actions. It almost received a 3 star review due to the trembling and rambling narrative, but that’s just the point. The narrator is not only unreliable, but mentally in shambles. She’s driven to extreme levels of surveillance and gall due to her anxiety and surity that she’s in the right.

sarahe221's review

Uninteresting plot, unlikeable characters and not very gripping 

silverbullet096's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm reading this book at a very emotional time in my life both as a parent now myself and as a child who clashed terribly with their own mother. The depths this story explores spoke to me on a personal level in much the same way the art of the main character spoke to those who saw it exhibited. I would recommend this to anyone on a journey of healing from their past. It may not be a 1:1 fit for your experience but I can almost guarantee you will find yourself and your mother here for better or worse. It's just a matter of what you'll do with that discovery afterwards. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Self harm

r3dgiant's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

zmeiat's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 Dette var en mild thriller med en vag slutt som kan tolkes som man vill. Karakterene var ihvertfall meget dynamiske og sammensatte hver for seg.

Forholdet Johanna har til moren sin gjør henne besatt og hengt opp i fortiden og en kilde av kompliserte følelser, og gjett om hun tenker på det 20 år senere! Det er også alltid noe i forholdet mellom karakterene som lurer under overflaten, men som man ikke er helt sikker på før mot slutten hvor

det viser seg at moren var så ulykkelig at hun kuttet seg mens Johanna var fortsatt liten.

Dessverre var det Vigdis Hjort som leste i lydboka og ga et for voldsomt uttrykk til teksten, noe som ikke passet i det hele tatt. Johanna lider i stillhet, og bortsett fra den dramatiske scenen mot slutten så var den typen innlesning av hennes indre monolog for distraherende og unødvendig. Ellers var alt annet glimrende. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Stalking and Grief

Moderate: Self harm

frede11's review against another edition

dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

caropullen's review

5.0

Wow. This book has a kind of cumulative power that builds up while you’re reading it. It’s quite claustrophobic and intense.

rosalie362819's review

Favourite quotes:
“Had I called Mum to get to know her again? To see who she was now? To talk to Mum as if she weren't my mum, but an ordinary human being, a random woman at a railway station?

That's impossible. Not because she isn't an ordinary human being with all the associated flaws, but because a mother can never be an ordinary human being to her children, and 1 am one of her children. Even if she has discovered new interests, learned new skills, changed her personality, she will always be the mother from the past to me. Perhaps she hates that that's how it is, being a mother is a cross to bear. Mum is fed up with being a mum, with being my mum, and in a way she isn't now, but as long as her daughter is alive, she can't be safe. I wonder if Mum always felt that being my mum was incompatible with being herself? What if Mum had wished not to be my mum right from the moment I was born? But there was no escape for her, no matter how hard she tried.”

“She'll say she has changed. It's understandable that parents, once they are older and wiser, want their children to look at them afresh. But no one can expect or demand of the children that they forget the image of their mother as they experienced her in their childhood or that they erase the image of their mother created over the first thirty years of their life and instead see her objectively as a seventy or eighty-year-old.”

“The fact that her mother's words appear to have no effect on Mina, is Mina's way of punishing her mother. Child and mother.”

“In the absence of information, I invent her.”

“That’s the benefit of regular contact, anything painful is slowly neutralised. But there might be a price to pay. What is it?”

“I wondered if Mum had started to speak in this manner so typical of old people, sentences formed a long time ago and now merely repeated.”

elsakarlson's review

dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0