A review by afi_whatafireads
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Hauntingly beautiful and suffocating to a fault.

A heartfelt story that tugs your heart at the deepest parts - to a point that it feels stifling. It will rip your heart out as we go in deeper and deeper into the narrator's train-of-thought ; somewhere that its like falling into an abyss of absolute nothingness.


"“the relationship between mother and son and mother and daughter is different, because the mother is a mirror in which the daughter sees her future self and the daughter is a mirror in which the mother sees her lost self, ”


There's something almost ethereal to this story - in terms of how it feels like to be reading into the narrator's thoughts - in which it felt almost like a blurred line between the past and the future; between reality and what is not.

Reading the background story of the author and her previous work Will and Testament: A Novel, ( which I haven't read , but had gone through an interview of hers ) , in which the author narrates the story as like an autofiction of the strenuous relationship between her family, especially the one she has with her mother. Whilst the author neither confirms nor denies this, its somewhat almost looking through the lens of a person who has gone through such lengths and pains of their own and can be felt through the narration of the story.

The narrator named as Johanna is a sixty year old woman who is in hopes to reconcile with her mother - (view spoiler) - in which she had walked out from her family. Its a constant journey of narration in proses that seemed like a journal of sorts - going back and forth to her childhood and the present in which she tries to find out truths about her past and present.

Personal Ratings : 4.5🌟

The story had highlighted the complex relationships between mother and daughter and how a falling out can cause even a sixty year old woman to act out of what her age should have acted. It came to a point that the narrator became somewhat obsessed in what she 'felt' her mother will act or think - in somewhat giving voice to her mother - and following her every move. Honestly, in the case of the narrator and her mother, it won't be easy to pinpoint who is right and who is wrong. Their relationship and strain stems from generational trauma and the mental abuse that both the narrator and her mother had faced. It manifested into a series of blames and hurtful retorts , and lastly souring and burning the bridges of the relationship.


“Surely parents have the lifelong obligation, unlike the child? According to the Bible, it’s the other way round, the child must honour its mother and father in order to live long in the land, but then again the Bible was written by parents to keep the offspring in their place.”


Honestly, there's nothing hopeful about the story. It cuts your breath even if there were pages that has only a one-liner. The story is written in proses of thoughts in which you felt that you're intruding the deepest parts of the narrator in which she is at her most vulnerable. Whilst its suffocating, you won't be able to stop reading the story as the writing is so compelling, you'd be left only to want to finish the story, to find out if the narrator gets what she aims to get in the first place.

The sense of helplessness and the narrator's hopeful wish to reconcile with her mother felt almost realistic. Not something that is easy to read, but is a read that I will remember for a very long time. The complex feelings that it left me after finishing it, makes the story a one that I felt worth of the International Booker Prize Longlist.