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A review by littoral
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth
2.0
I picked up Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth because it was included on the International Booker Longlist. I had my reservations, since it’s not the type of book I typically read - and after completing it, I think it’s unlikely I’d reread it. But there are things to celebrate in how the book is constructed and draw the reader in to recommend it for another reader.
The premise of the book is that the narrator has just moved back to the city in which she grew up, Oslo, and in which her mother still lives. The narrator has been estranged from her mother ever since she (the narrator) abruptly left home, a husband, and a career in law to pursue a man she has just met and a career in art in the United States. Although she ultimately makes a family with that second man, and gains some international notoriety for her art, her relationship with her mother never recovers, especially after she later exhibits two of her works, Mother and Child 1 and 2, in her hometown.
The writing is a near stream-of-consciousness exhibition of the unreliable narrator’s thoughts about her troubled relationship with her mother. Her deepening psychological obsession parallels increasingly compulsive behavior to physically shadow her mother, observing her apartment, her walks with her sister to their father’s grave, her time in church, even going through her trash. I struggled at first with this book that is so defined by the thoughts of one narcissistic, obsessive character (the first 25% in particular has some repetitive elements), but the author manages to propel the action forward with the gradual deepening of the physical and psychological elements in both the present state of events and the author’s reflection of the past in her thoughts. As these unfold, you reflect on the nature and responsibilities of parenthood; the nature of the ties that form between parents and children, children and parents; and how these are perpetuated across generations, until you are propelled to an explosive end. I would not call this pleasurable to read, but I can see how there can be pleasure in discussing this one.
The premise of the book is that the narrator has just moved back to the city in which she grew up, Oslo, and in which her mother still lives. The narrator has been estranged from her mother ever since she (the narrator) abruptly left home, a husband, and a career in law to pursue a man she has just met and a career in art in the United States. Although she ultimately makes a family with that second man, and gains some international notoriety for her art, her relationship with her mother never recovers, especially after she later exhibits two of her works, Mother and Child 1 and 2, in her hometown.
The writing is a near stream-of-consciousness exhibition of the unreliable narrator’s thoughts about her troubled relationship with her mother. Her deepening psychological obsession parallels increasingly compulsive behavior to physically shadow her mother, observing her apartment, her walks with her sister to their father’s grave, her time in church, even going through her trash. I struggled at first with this book that is so defined by the thoughts of one narcissistic, obsessive character (the first 25% in particular has some repetitive elements), but the author manages to propel the action forward with the gradual deepening of the physical and psychological elements in both the present state of events and the author’s reflection of the past in her thoughts. As these unfold, you reflect on the nature and responsibilities of parenthood; the nature of the ties that form between parents and children, children and parents; and how these are perpetuated across generations, until you are propelled to an explosive end. I would not call this pleasurable to read, but I can see how there can be pleasure in discussing this one.