The mother load

An estranged artist returns home to face frayed relationships and childhood trauma.

- MARCUS HOBSON

IS MOTHER DEAD, by Vigdis Hjorth (Verso Books, $35)

Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth is a master of portraying dysfunctional families. They pervade the pages of a number of her novels. In the bestselling Will and Testament, a family are torn apart by the gifting of island holiday homes to the two youngest siblings while the eldest are estranged and ultimately not believed when they recall childhood horrors.

The thrust of Hjorth’s latest novel is perfectly summed up in one of several blunt one-line chapters. “If we knew, if we understood when we were young how crucial childhood is, no one would ever dare have children.”

Our narrator is Johanna, a middle-aged artist who returns to live in Oslo where a gallery is preparing a retrospective of her paintings. She has lived in the US for 30 years, not even returning home to visit her dying father or attend his funeral. Having abandoned her legal career and lawyer husband to run away with an art teacher, she later wrote to her parents trying to explain her decisions.