As a young man, he became a celebrated painter after his first exhibition. He was the one everybody talked about. In his next, ambitious exhibition he sold only two paintings. As a consequence he forsook both city life and human contact, retiring to his childhood home near the mountains. For years, he has only opened his door to his sister.

This Christmas he is heating up the house, making preparations for his sister’s visit. He paints every day, but doesn’t feel as strong as he used to. His body can no longer be trusted – sometimes he faints, sometimes teeth come loose and fall out.

She is driving through the snow, intending to set up her camera and take his portrait.

The poetic novel Dust to Dust shows the amount of labour that goes into trying to survive and create something permanent. The novel also tells the story of a lifelong conversation between a brother and sister – and about the tenderness between them.

Praise for Dust to Dust:

“An empathetic novel about a poetic, intense and socially dysfunctional artist’s mind … the fascination for the mind of an artist and the problematic relationship between the artist’s personality and his artistic work is also the driving force behind this year’s Dust to Dust … In Dust to Dust, Blom paints a desperately beautiful portrait of a yearning, sorrowful, lonely man, a dreamer and an aesthete, a person more sensitive than the rest of us, who uses his art as shelter and a way of escape”
5/6 stars, Stavanger Aftenblad

“Blom’s sensuous prose suits this tight little format she has chosen for her latest novel … Kirsti Blom has managed to provide this little novel with both spirit and vitality. This if above all due to the way she portrays the somewhat ambiguous, but still tender relationship between brother and sister … The encounters between brother and sister have been drawn both with accuracy and reserve, showing the difficult balance of intimate relationships. Kirsti Blom presents this relationship as in a way that gives tension and vitality to the novel. There is something both raw and tender in this description that makes Dust to Dust into something more than just a story about the nature of art”
Dagsavisen

“Not many can write such beautiful and sensuous prose as Kirsti Blom’s. The novel Dust to Dust is a rare gem with a unique shimmering glow. Counting pages, it is a slim novel, quiet, with little action, but with great power in its finely tuned observations and probing reflections … a novel that can open up in many directions. In any case it deals with a relationship distinguished by a fundamental fragility and tenderness, and with language and art as the road to the other”
5/6 stars, Hamar Arbeiderblad