Bjørn Ingvaldsen

Nightshift at the Necropolis

This is one of the author’s darkest and strongest novels. Well-formulated, insistent and powerful on how wrong things can go when adults put themselves first.

Some people work in the daytime; others work at night. Max’s mother is a night worker. At night she sits in her office in the cellar; she sleeps during the day. Max is left alone. He goes to school and plays sport, and sometimes he visits his father at the weekends. But when he’s at home, he’s all alone.

Out in the garage is Grandad’s old sports car: an MG. It’s not often that anyone drives it, but one day Max and his Grandad find empty wine bottles inside. It’s not only work that Max’s mother is do-ing. She dreams too. About traveling, about meet-ing someone, and being recognised for her work. Max’s mother is a death researcher. She works where the dead are: the churchyard, the burial grounds, the necropolis. In the dark. That’s why she works night shifts.