Vigdis Hjorth, Will & Testament. Verso pb, 2019, first published in Norwegian 2016, 330 pp. Translated by Charlotte Barslund. Library copy.

I’d never read a Norwegian-authored novel before, and so when I came across a reference to one of Hjorth’s more recent novels, I checked my local library catalogue: Will & Testament was the only title of hers in stock, so I borrowed and read it.

I’d like to say I enjoyed it, but I didn’t. I skipped quite a bit, which was quite easy, because it’s written in an annoyingly repetitive, reflexive style: sentences and clauses are repeated or rephrased over and over, holding up the flow of the narrative, and making the first-person narrator sound self-absorbed.

I acknowledge that this is a bit unfair, as she’s trying constantly to come to terms with a traumatic sequence of events in her early childhood, and the subsequent painful rifts caused in the family by her finally telling her parents and siblings about it. They refuse to believe her, causing the trauma to be redoubled: it kind of metastasises in her. She self-medicates with alcohol, and messes up several relationships with men.

There’s an awful lot, too, about the constant stream of emails and phone conversations that result from her ending the 23-year period of estrangement from the rest of the family. Now in her fifties and with children and grandchildren of her own, it seems some kind of resolution and repair might be about to happen.

This is scuppered by that most destructive of events in so many families: news of a ‘last will and testament’ (hence the title in English) and the ways in which the parents have announced the distribution of their assets is to be accomplished. In particular the two holiday cabins in which all of the family have enjoyed spending summers are to go to the two younger sisters, while the narrator and her elder brother are left feeling cast aside by a humiliatingly small bequest of cash.

I’m afraid I just couldn’t care too much about any of this. I’ve read a few reviews in the online media and by fellow bloggers, most of whom speak in glowing terms about this novel. Maybe it’s a deficiency in me; but I felt relief when I’d rushed through the final pages – in which nothing is really resolved, and it’s never entirely clear if the childhood trauma did actually take place. Her mother is no comfort: she’s a drama queen with several performative suicide attempts to her name, and a tendency towards hysteria and submissive acceptance of her husband’s (the narrator’s father’s) domineering ways.

Or maybe her father, portrayed as a cold-hearted tyrant, was right in telling her that she only needed to look in a mirror to see the face of a psychopath. I prefer to think he’s the dodgy one.

There’s some quite interesting stuff about philosophy and politics – Hjorth makes some valid comparisons with the futile efforts of this dysfunctional family to make up its differences and repair itself with the truth and reconciliation initiatives of countries like S. Africa after apartheid. There can be no forgiveness without an acknowledgement of the grievances that caused the fissures and conflict.

That repetitive, looping style and confessional tone made the novel seem cold and clinical – which is strange considering the powerful emotional nature of the content. There’s very little dialogue or scene-setting; most of the attention is on what’s going on in the narrator’s (often confused, denying, angry) head. I’ve nothing against this mannered kind of writing, but it just didn’t work for me.