Harrowing and propulsive ... Hjorth deftly conveys the psychological warfare of familial conflict in circuitous, searching sentences. Fragments replicate the stab of betrayal, run-ons rummage for truth amid lies ... Precise and affecting.
At first, Johanna seems like an ordinary woman with reasonable questions about the family who tried to mold her in their image, and who then rejected her for rejecting them. Over time, her preoccupation with her estranged family grows, driving her to extreme, invasive measures. Her obsession propels the story toward its tense conclusion ... Is Mother Dead is a Norwegian domestic thriller about the lengths to which people will go to dig up truths that others want to stay buried.
Writing with a rush of anxious interiority beautifully reproduced by Barslund’s translation, Hjorth spins out Joanna’s hopes, fears, and half-suppressed memories in obsessive and propulsive run-on sentences, full of self-reflexive questions and crushing doubt ... If we read the basement as suppressed memories, buried by pain and time, and the top floor as the land of fervent, authentic living, Joanna performs this double movement throughout the novel, the descent a prerequisite to the ascent. Is Mother Dead both pulls readers into Joanna’s adventure and calls on them to become more alive to their own task, their arms stretching upward for the next wrung.
Hjorth’s brief, diaristic chapters convey the flavor of psychological rumination, gradually building in intensity as Johanna grapples with the increasing desperation inspired by her eighty-five-year-old mother’s radio silence ... confirms Hjorth’s place as an unparalleled chronicler of the fault lines in intimate relationships.
... bizarre yet totally mesmerising ... Hjorth is an expert in these knotty and endlessly fascinating family dynamics ... a very literary psychological thriller, its pacey vignettes translated with verve by Charlotte Barslund. Most of the book’s tension plays out in Johanna’s head. There is, for a book so fraught with tension, relatively little action ... But when those scenes do come, hey are delivered with intoxicating suspense ... scintillating.
Hjorth does not pretend to offer a reliable narrator telling the facts exactly as they happened—memory overwhelms the present, fact and fiction blur, and we can sense the past closing in on Johanna just as she closes in on her mother ... Hjorth has masterfully written a family drama where no reunion takes place and a thriller where no blood is shed. Hjorth’s prose keeps us on edge, puncturing breathless sentences that stretch to half a page with four-word questions that undercut everything she previously said. There is a sense of inescapable claustrophobia ... leaves the reader so fully enveloped in Johanna’s mind that it is as if we are there, shivering in the Norwegian winter with her. I found myself calling my mom when I finished the last page, asking for a recipe she used to make when I was growing up, a recipe I was suddenly craving.
Gripping ... 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.
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 ... A darkly insightful examination of mother-daughter relationships that captivates with the suspense of a thriller.
