3.5

I appreciate this more than I enjoy it. I think, structurally, Hjorth makes all the right decisions. To have a novel be so perspectivally claustrophobic is a feat. Around half of this novel is the narrator conjuring hypotheticals about her estranged relationship with her mother and sister, and this world of hypothetical is agonizing to read. The protagonist is so navel-gazing, so blind to herself, and yet so intelligent, so empathetic, and, as a whole, oh so incredibly obnoxious and annoying. But Hjorth cuts through this with extremely short chapters and a bit of nature writing. Not enough to allow you to feel as if you've escaped the novel's laser focus on if the narrator's mother will ever speak to her again, but enough to take a breather tonally then get whipped back into the torrent of anxiety and ennui. I love the way this novel revels in the dilemma between self-perception and a cogent awareness of other people's lives beyond your knowledge. The narrator is a mother thinking about how she cannot speak to her own mother yet, eventually, through her hypotheticals and subsequent reconsiderations of her past, comes to realize who her mother is beyond being the mother the narrator perceives her to be. What I love about this is that Hjorth never makes this into melodrama. Instead, she reflects upon the lives of women, perspective, time, art ethics in relation to perspective, etc. It's darkly humorous as well. Venomous vitriol for 300 pages.