A woman is on the run. With a baby tightly held against her chest, she hiding from forces that follow her. Somewhere else, a woman is creating her perfectlynormal life, with a normal house and husband. The contrasts in their lives and their relations ...
A woman is on the run. With a baby tightly held against her chest, she hiding from forces that follow her. Somewhere else, a woman is creating her perfectly
normal life, with a normal house and husband. The contrasts in their lives and their relationship to what is considered normal and desirable are striking.
A woman is hiding in her late grandmother’s cottage, nursing a small infant that isn’t hers. The fear of being discovered by her family and lose the child leads her to hitch-hike to Stockholm where she becomes a shadowy member of the homeless’ society.
For several months, the weather getting colder all the time, she strays from place to place, feeding the baby with leftovers from fast food restaurants and dustbins.
Parallel to this, another woman leads her life, leaving nothing to circumstances, in her middle-class terraced house with her wellchosen normal husband and two children, raised into the virtue of normality. This is her creation. It is perfect and it is Normal.
Eventually, the stories join together. There is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’.
With dread and increasing opposition, one follows the development of events in Sofia Nordin’s impressive and suggestive novel. In Gå sönder, gå hel / Breaking/Whole Sofia Nordin has found a literary form for a complex story that switches between hallucinatory glimpses and decay and a dreadful matter-of-factness. The story rolls along inexorably, virtually a case study; strong, mysterious and hard to put down.
Press voices:
“Gå sönder, gå hel is a really strong novel, one you read with nervous interest. Inexorably, and with a clear and astute style, Sofia Nordin tells her double and powerfully moving story.” Arbetarbladet
“Gå sönder, gå hel is first and foremost a descent into a very injured psyche, entirely within the boundaries of realistic fiction. And Sofia Nordin, who among other things, has been nominated twice for the August Award for her YA novels, now takes yet another huge step onto the playing field of important Swedish contemporary literature.” Helsningborgs Dagblad
“[Nordin’s] prose is smooth, her observations sharp. /.../ She is a strong and exciting storyteller.” Svenska Dagbladet