2024
It is the winter before the moon landing in 1969. Goggen has come home from his stay in a juvenile detention centre, where he was sent for stabbing his father. At Tove’s house, a two bedroom flat on the eighth floor in an apartment building in the suburb, foreign seamen visit, and there is an ambience of hospitality and generosity, but at night her parents fight and her mother expects her daughter’s loyalty. Goggen is the only person Tove trusts, but in the course of this winter they are irrevocably driven apart.
The adult narrator wants to find out why things turned out the way they did for Tove and Goggen, why were they the ones to end up like the odd pieces of the puzzle? Oslo’s suburban life in the late sixties comes to life in this book; Nilsen enters a familiar landscape and makes it appear brand new.
"In light, flowing prose the text describes a familiar universe in a new way, through finely tuned memories, impressions and reflections. Thus, the portrait of the young Tove is characterised by sensitivity and vulnerability."
Tove Nilsen
