Toril Brekke

We All Loved Your Mother

-Who’s my father? Agathe asks several times, but no one ever answers.

Set in Oslo during the 50s, in the nicer areas of town, Agathe lives with her grandparents and her uncle Jannik who dreams of becoming a sailor. And her mother, a woman who doesn’t really see her child, but is lost in her longing for other places, like the stages of Berlin, London or Paris.

Little Agathe is left to herself and she is the one to discover that the handicapped boy next door both can walk and talk – and loves music.

One day everything changes. Agathe is torn away from the beautiful life she knows and moves with her mother and the new family to a working class suburb, where she has to hide that she can read and play instruments.

We all Loved Your Mother is a coming of age novel, and a hymn to those living in the shadows of others, who still manage to find a place in the sunlight.