Publisher's Weekly Review
Hjorth (Long Live the Post Horn!) delivers a gripping tale of obsession about an artist and her frayed relationship with her family. Johanna, nearing 60, hasn't spoken to her estranged mother or sister since her father's death many years ago. Now, recently widowed, she returns to Oslo after decades spent living in the U.S. Her adult son lives in Copenhagen, and a retrospective of her work is soon to launch in Norway. While working on new pieces for the show, Johanna decides to call her mother, who doesn't answer. Johanna then begins to construct a fantasy of her mother's daily life while simultaneously ratcheting up her attempts at interaction. She hides outside her mother's building, follows her from a distance, and sifts through her trash. Johanna calls and texts, yet she continues to receive no response, and her fixation on breaking through swells along with memories of a rocky childhood and her mother's own unhappiness. Hjorth keenly walks the line between Johanna's concern and mania; as Johanna's hang-ups occasionally spin out of control, they remain true to the character. This accomplished novel is hard to shake. (Oct.)
Guardian Review
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. Johanna, who was once a promising law student, abandoned her marriage, her family and her country almost 30 years ago to pursue love and a new vocation as an artist after falling for the American artist who taught her watercolour evening class. From her new base in Utah she is a success but her paintings, which explore motherhood, humiliate her parents. After Johanna fails to return to Norway for her father's funeral, even the cursory text messages from her sister cease. "She would contact me if Mum died. She has to, hasn't she?" wonders Johanna, at the start of the book, in another convincing translation by Barslund. An invitation from an Oslo gallery for a retrospective exhibition has lured Johanna back to her homeland and back to her past. Now in her late 50s, Johanna obsesses over her mother. Where is she living? What does she look like? And does she really have scars on her wrist? She calls, repeatedly, but her mother never picks up. "In the absence of information, I invent her," writes Hjorth. Johanna can't believe her mother never thinks about her. "About what I think, about how I am, no matter how angry, how resentful she is, she must wonder because in spite of everything I am her nearly sixty-year-old child." The question of what children owe their parents and vice versa lies at the heart of this raw novel, which returns to many of the themes in Will and Testament. "If we knew, if we understood when we were young how crucial childhood is, no one would ever dare have children," writes Hjorth, leaving the rest of the page blank. The white space underscores Johanna's isolation; it's an effective device and one Hjorth repeats often. "Surely parents have the lifelong obligation, unlike the child?" Johanna muses, adding that according to the Bible it's the other way round - "but then again the Bible was written by parents to keep the offspring in place". This novel is more than just a lament for a lost parent, however. Hjorth also raises questions about the personal price of artistic freedom. Johanna's triptych Child and Mother I, "where the mother stands in a corner wrapped up in herself with dark introverted eyes and the child is curled up in the other corner", alienates her from her own mother but resonates with gallery-goers who see themselves in both images. As childhood memories resurface, Johanna starts stalking her mother to obtain some answers; this injection of suspense, which comes with many of the trappings of Nordic noir (drunken detective, isolated cabin in the woods), keeps the narrative moving. The result is an absorbing study of inner turmoil that is unexpectedly gripping. With only four of her 20-odd novels in English translation, Is Mother Dead will captivate Hjorth's growing anglophone fanbase, although newcomers may prefer to start with Will and Testament, which offers more insight and even greater drama.
Kirkus Review
A Norwegian artist probes the rift between her mother and herself. Johanna is a widowed painter nearly 60 years old, her son grown and with a child of his own, who's been estranged from her mother and sister for nearly three decades. When asked to prepare a retrospective of her work in Oslo, her hometown, Johanna uproots her life and moves back there. Rather than focus on painting, however, Johanna dwells on how she once again lives in the same city as her mother and sister. One night, after a few glasses of wine, Johanna calls her mother; when she doesn't pick up, Johanna begins to fill the silence between them with her own best guesses of her mother's thoughts. "I use words to create my image of you," she thinks. The novel follows Johanna as she recalls her childhood and catalogs the events that culminated in her estrangement--such as her decision to leave her first husband, Thorleif, and abandon her family-sanctioned legal studies to marry her art teacher, Mark, and pursue painting in America. Johanna's obsession quickly escalates from that phone call to full-blown stalking. As she sifts through her mother's garbage and lurks on the stairs of her mother's apartment building, she's compelling in her desire to understand what it means to be a fully grown woman and yet still need your mother. The novel's strength lies in its deft use of psychological analysis as it looks at this relationship through one lens after another. While it's full of metaphorical hauntings, it's most plaintive in Johanna's desire to have a conversation with her mother. The novel falters in its resolution, but Johanna's intelligence and emotion still captivate. Like a wounded animal in her need and grief, Johanna cries, "I made myself homeless and homeless I am, and my anguish will not be stilled. Hailstones lash the window and teeth gnaw at the walls, steel knuckles bang on doors, paws maul, creatures sigh, wanting to get in, the terror arrives, the great darkness rises from the forest and the sky hangs low over me like a stone." A darkly insightful examination of mother-daughter relationships that captivates with the suspense of a thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
