Marit Eikemo
A Free and Non-binding Valuation

Hanne is tired of seeing all her successful friends from college move into beautiful villas with perfect gardens while she is stuck in the same old, tiny apartment with her partner and two kids. But now, finally, their dream house has been put on the market. It is the solution to everything: a new house with new rooms and new possibilities – even a new opportunity to rekindle her relationship.

We follow Hanne and Andreas, a middle-class couple in their forties with two kids, in the days before the bidding war begins as they assess the prospect of the house, room by room. But through these talks of practical solutions and economic obstacles, they end up assessing not only the house, but their relationship itself.

Inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and today’s housing market, A Free and Nonbinding Valuation is an entertaining and surprising drama about the dream of a perfect life. Eikemo digs down into the fundament of our values and romantic relationships: Are you still the same person your partner fell in love with? Or have you changed – to suit them or maybe to make things easier? And are relationships built to last? Or would they all crumble under such intense scrutiny?

A literary achievement… Marit Eikemo is a master observer of how we live today. She brings together characteristics and observations in comically-absurd images with a precision the reader can rejoice over… [This] emphasizes Marit Eikemo’s position as a central observer of our times.

NRK

Worthy of a play. What is really hidden behind the housing dream, I’d never manage to accurately guess. The ending leaves a question of Ibsenian proportions: How disillusioned are we actually willing to live?”

Bergens Tidende

She’s done it again! Marit Eikemo has written a cracking good page-turner about the everyday life of the Norwegian middle-class, broken dreams and the pursuit of the perfect life...significant linguistic force and energy... [Eikemo] has emerged as a contemporary storyteller of rank.

VG

With A Free and Nonbinding Valuation, Eikemo has written herself into the top tier of Norwegian contemporary writers.

Hardanger folkeblad

A particularly good novel about choices, what determines them, and the price of closing. Marit Eikemo asks questions, stages dilemmas, without drawing conclusions.

Dagavisen

Marit Eikemo

Awarded the Amalie Skram Prize 2017, previously awarded to authors such as Linn Ullmann, Herbjørg Wassmo and Vigdis Hjorth.

From the jury's motivation: “In the same vein as Amalie Skram, Marit Eikemo is a truth-seeking author... Eikemo concerns herself with what governs the choices people make, why we act as we do, why we do not choose to act differently... Eikemo explores like an archaeologist. Through astute observations of everyday life, she uncovers the abstract from the concrete – life, living together, community, being an outsider. With humour, humility and empathy, she delves into themes such as social exclusion, otherness, alienation, and loneliness in one of the world’s richest countries.

Marit Eikemo is a contemporary author in two ways: not only as a representative of our times, but also as an explorer of our times. She is not afraid of the concrete and the everyday, rather it is through these that we gain a deeper understanding of our times and of ourselves.” 