Amanda Quraishi recenzis Wills and Testaments de Charlotte Barslund
Meh.
2 steloj
Will & Testament by Vigdis Hjorth deals with the painful topics of incest and family dysfunction. The book is (at least partially) taken from events in the author's own life, which means she writes in great detail about these dynamics, aptly capturing the pain and frustration of dealing with a family in denial.
The story is about a family with four adult children whose father recently died. The eldest two faced serious abuses by their parents, while the younger two seem to have had gratifying lives and love their parents devotedly. The central conflict of the novel is over their father's will, which leaves the two family vacation cabins to the youngest siblings. The older children, including the narrator Bergljot, are rightly upset, and the result is a tedious family drama in which Bergliot's feelings of betrayal come out through protracted arguments about the cabins (that is, when she's not …
Will & Testament by Vigdis Hjorth deals with the painful topics of incest and family dysfunction. The book is (at least partially) taken from events in the author's own life, which means she writes in great detail about these dynamics, aptly capturing the pain and frustration of dealing with a family in denial.
The story is about a family with four adult children whose father recently died. The eldest two faced serious abuses by their parents, while the younger two seem to have had gratifying lives and love their parents devotedly. The central conflict of the novel is over their father's will, which leaves the two family vacation cabins to the youngest siblings. The older children, including the narrator Bergljot, are rightly upset, and the result is a tedious family drama in which Bergliot's feelings of betrayal come out through protracted arguments about the cabins (that is, when she's not actively avoiding her family).
I'm going to be honest and say that there wasn't much of a plot to this book. It literally felt like reading the therapy journal of someone who needs to vent about how shitty their family is. There was no satisfactory resolution, or anything driving the story because the entire family already knows about Bergljot's claims of abuse. It's just... they ignore and/or deny it.
I'm giving this book two stars because I finished it, and the depictions of the family - each of them inhabiting their roles in the dysfunction perfectly - were done well. But ultimately, it was boring, and I got to the point where I was like, "I'm not a therapist, lady." It did feel like that one friend who only wants to hang out in order to dump all their problems on you. Meh.