Last time the Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth wrote about an estranged daughter, in her 2016 novel Will and Testament, she caused ructions with her family, who felt the novel was too autobiographical for comfort.
In that chilling book, which Charlotte Barslund translated into English in 2019, a row over inheritance prompts the main character, Bergljot, to confront her family about claims her father sexually abused her as a child. One of Hjorth’s sisters retaliated by writing her own novel, retelling the story from a different perspective, while Hjorth’s mother threatened to sue a Bergen theatre for its stage adaptation – moves that only heightened the novel’s autobiographical associations. Is Mother Dead also features a disaffected daughter who can’t resist reopening old wounds: it’s as if Bergljot – and Hjorth, who has had almost no contact with most of her family in years – has unfinished business.
