They by Helle Helle

They by Helle Helle

Danish Fiction

Original title –  de

Tranlstor Maritn Aitken

Source – Review copy

I was kinbdl sent this as I felt for sure it would be on the Boolker longlist as it was on a lot of peoples guess and I had reviewed her earlier books This should be written in the presenrt when it came out in translation in 2015 and I loved that book so it was great to see another book from her being translated all these years later.  Helle Helle has been nominated for the Nordic Council Prize four times, one of the biggest book prizes in the Scandinavian region.  This book won a couple of Book prizes.  She is known for her Merasured, realstic voices and themes her danish wiki page says and i can agree with that.

On the third of April her mother says:

I must have swallowed a stone?

They go for a walk by the playing fields, the anemones are out. Some small boys are playing football, shrieks and shouts, one of them’s crying up against the goalpost. Her mother’s in her winter coat. They’re having beefburgers, hence the walk. She’s wearing an Icelandie sweater herself, it’s still too early yet, the wind cuts through the wool.

‘A stone stone?’ she says, her mother nods.

‘A heavy one. Here.”

She pauses a second and puts a hand to her coat, below the chest. They carry on then towards the pond.

The shrubberies are dotted with crocuses, they don’t care for crocuses.

Early on in the book this capoture the nature of her prose thou

This is a simple book about a mother and daughter in a small Danish backwater town of Rødby. They live in a small flat above the hairdresser’s, a cut above in the town. It follows a few months in their lives, it starts off as just the normal life of a single mother and a teen daughter, and the tensions that can bring. The duagher and her friend Tove are like most girls their age, going to parties, discovering boys, and drinking. Also, the usual teen trauma of ” Am I pretty? “, ” Does he like me? Am I popular?  The usual everyday things we all had at that age. But then what happens when the mother’s throat issues are more serious than she first thought, changing the rhythm and way of their lives as she is given a terminal diagnosis.  How does this change the course of the books from hospital stays to the way the daughter now becomes the mother in a way, looking after an ailing parent? What it does is capture the changing of the roles and how the teen’s life is changed, those moments we all have at this time, caught piece by piece.

Her mother’s head looks very small on the pillow. She props herself up the moment she sees them in the doorway.

“Now there’s a welcome sight, she says with a smile, her cheeks are round and red. A strand of hair hangs down in front of her eye:

Would you look at me,’ she says and blows it away, reaches out to them both, after which she picks up a hairpin from the bedside cabinet.

Palle folds his duffle coat over the footboard. They sit on either side of her, she on the edge of the bed.

Her mother smooths the back of her hand, her hand is warm and dry.

‘Do you want a peppermint?’ she says.

‘No, you keep them, says Palle.

A forceful cough builds and erupts behind a curtain, her mother lifts her eyebrows. In a pause between two phlegmy expulsions her mother puts a finger to her lips and whispers:

“She’s a pain in the neck.’ Then, immediately, in a clearer voice:

‘So, would you like some coffee?

‘Do they have coffee? Palle says, her mother nods:

“They must have?

This line hit me about her m,other head on the pillow it took me back to my pown mother dying in a hospital and me thinking something similar

I bet you now thinking this is a sads book but no it is one of those books that draws you in as a reader and the normality and direct style of Helle Helles writing makes it not soppy more just how it is when caught up in a ilness a terminal diagnossis those little momnets of interaction of how the vbook sees the mother and daughter change over the book is beautiful at times tender not over written as it could be no sparse hard at times I felt there is no punches held back in her prose no iot is all the more realstic for that . That was the main thing I remember from her earlier book: how her writing is perfect in its tone and not over the top, just enough like a master chef, she knows what puts together a great read. Have you read this or her earlier book?