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Roman
Publisher:
October
Release year:
2021
«Skaranger meets expectations.»
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Emily is at level two, according to the policewoman who interrogates the 19-year-old girl. Not that she’s stupid, but she’s not very smart either. Bad at school, remove. Such girls with empty, shiny, dreamy, blurred eyes. Those who end up working at the checkout at Kiwi.
Maria Navarro Skaranger’s new novel, “Emily forever”, is a portrait of a pregnant young girl, a future single mother, daughter of a single mother.
It is a fateful story of social heritage; a hopeless description of a directionless existence that is apparently genetically determined. Depressing, but deeply beautiful.
The young author – Skaranger was born in 1994 – made his debut in 2015 with the childhood novel “All foreigners have closed curtains”, which was nominated for Tarjei Vesaas’ debut award and later filmed. In 2018 came “Book about grief (The story of Nils in the forest)” which was awarded the Oslo Prize 2018 and the EU Literature Prize 2020.
Could have been spicy
Heavy thoughts
The third novel, “Emily forever”, meets the high expectations. Skaranger writes closely and sensitively about conditions of gray everyday life, of TV sound as the only distraction and thoughts that are too heavy to think about: “When it is quiet, she is forced to think in long paths, thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts that line up one after the other and never stop.”
“Is her inner world so much bigger than the outer?” asks the narrator with a borrowed quote from Kirsten Thorup’s «Remembrance of love».
Emily’s grief-stricken inner world revolves around the idea of a child growing up in a home where the shower enclosure leaks and with tan cream climbs up the door frame. Oh no, she thinks. The narrator in the novel points out that there are always some families who do not make it happen, where the accident is inherited, where it lies in the genes and incubates. Is Emily doomed to fail?
Heat from the first scene
Emily’s mother confirms the hopelessness. She wonders if it is the case that the choice of men is inherited: “Em chose the wrong one because her mother had chosen the wrong men before.” Em grew up without a father, but at school she lied and said that he worked at the nougat factory in Drammen. Emily herself fell for Pablo, a petty gangster who runs away when the police are after him. She fell for him when she was 17; he was small in stature, but kind and loving and warm whenever he wanted. Here the narrator puts a parenthesis into the story: (I do not understand what she sees in him, I do not know how to fall in love with such a person, he has a smile that takes up too much space on his face.)
Solidarity
The narrator’s grip is interesting and original. Emily is criticized, commented on and reprimanded by the narrator. But there is a form of solidarity and optimism there, in contrast to all the outsiders, “official” people’s descriptions of the girl. Both police officers, midwives, doctors and mothers’ offices have their schematic opinions about the prerequisites and future prospects of the future single mother.
A class novel like this brings thoughts back in time to the hopelessness of Amalie Skram’s naturalistic stories of inherited poverty. But Maria Skaranger’s warm language and heartfelt sympathy with Emily shine throughout the novel.
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