NORSTEDTs ageNcy

Fiction
Sörja för de sina
Caring for One’s Own
by Kristina Sandberg
August 2012, 490 pages
Senior Editor: Eva Gedin
Sample translation in English of
Att föda ett barn/Giving Birth is available
Rights sold to:
Pantagruel, Norway
More than 10 000 copies sold!
Caring for One’s Own
Everything ought to be better now. Her husband
Tomas has managed to remain sober after being
treated with hypnoses by Dr Bjerre. And Maj is
doing everything she can for the family to have a
nice home and to be a perfect housewife. But she
feels like she will never live up to the high expectations
– real and imagined – of her husband
and his mother Thea.
Maj is a young stay-at-home mother and
wife in the welfare state of the 40’s and 50’s
when the housewife was still a desirable ideal
and seen as an important profession. She
tries hard to be loving towards her children,
and ensure that the home will be secure, harmonious
and flawless. But when the fatigue,
fear and anxiety overpowers her, her doubts
and her obsessiveness set in – nothing she or
her family does seem good enough. Tomas is
struggling to refrain from alcohol, and manage
the company inherited by his family,
but the suspicion that perhaps he started
drinking again hangs heavily over Maj and
the family. Her personal losses Maj doesn’t
even want to think about.
This is the second part in Kristina Sandberg’s
novel trilogy, which began with Att föda ett
barn, about a housewife’s life in Örnsköldsvik
in northern Sweden. Maj’s story is one
about motherhood, womanhood and living
with alcoholism, her personal struggles in a
changing world. It is an intimate portrayal
of an unhappy woman which lingers in the
reader’s mind.
Press voices for Sörja för de sina:
“What impresses the most is the ability to
build excitement around a life that on the
surface appears to be fairly uneventful. Some
readers of this review might sigh ‘but that
story, we have surely read before’ or mutter
something about ‘boring Swedish realism’.
Dismiss all such thoughts immediately! Believe
me when I say that Sörja för de sina, as
well as Att föda ett barn (even if you don’t
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