Book Review
Will and Testament (2016)
by Vigdis Hjorth
Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth is another nominee from the 2023 International Booker longlist. I couldn't track down the nominated title- Is Mother Dead- the LAPL just recently got a copy of the Ebook which I have on hold- but I found an available Audiobook of her 2016 work, Willa and Testament. I was intrigued by the description of a Norwegian writer of autofiction, since Karl Ove Knausgard is himself a Norwegian. A quick internet search reveals that Hjorth has appeared with his ex wife, Linda Knausgard, who has penned her own version of the events chronicled in My Struggle. Norwegian autofiction is a hot commodity- even if the French don't want to admit it.
One thing about Norwegian autofiction, read one book by an author, read them all, so I'm guessing that Will and Testament, a characteristically fraught tale about a family squabbling about an inheritance and deep family secrets (the narrator was molested by her father between the ages of five and seven, and the rest of her family, mother and two sisters, don't believe her). That's not a spoiler- you know from page one that the narrator and her father don't get along because of something she did to her when she was a young child. The continuous narrative is chopped up into 80 plus different chapters and presented non-chronologically. It might have been confusing but the narrator is so obsessed with this single situation and it's impact on her family dynamic that it is impossible to get confused. She simply doesn't discuss anything else.
As in every work of auto-fiction, the level of self-obsession is off the charts, mirroring culture and the way it has been impacted by the internet even when the protagonist of a work of autofiction never uses the internet, as is the case here. As an attorney who frequently represents women who were the victims of familial sexual abuse, I found Will and Testament fascinating, but it might easily trigger others for whatever reason.
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