Into the narrow field of Scandinavian multi-decker novels – populated by Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård – strides a new star. Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s Money to Burn, a bestseller and prize winner in Denmark, is the first novel in a seven-part series, inspired by a fire on a passenger ship off the coast of Norway in April 1990 that killed 159 people.
The book buzzes with electricity. What animates it initially is a story of love and hate between a couple named Maggie and Kurt. Kurt opens the book but Maggie gets more of our understanding, with the story wheeling around their lives together and apart: their romance, his violence, their daughter, Sofie, the pain of empty-nest syndrome. (Maggie keeps checking the drawers in Sofie’s old room in case she’s left anything behind.)
