Monica Isakstuen

Be Kind to the Animals

A small family of three is falling apart. They couldn’t make it. Karen couldn’t make it. While doing everything right - parting as friends, signing the papers, sharing custody, the way a modern woman is supposed to, everything inside her is rebelling. No, the child is mine. I’m its mother. There is nothing modern about me.

Still, the questions arise: To what degree is the role as a mother connected to being a family? Is the daughter still hers when she is with her father? If you’re a mother one week, what are you the next? Be Kind to the Animals is a raw, warm, acute, but at the same time surprising novel about being in the ruins of a marriage with the one you care about the most – every other week.

Winner of the 2016 Norwegian National Book Award Brageprisen for Fiction.