“A poetic non-fiction book about childhood, a mother’s love and mental illness. The book pulls the reader in immediately … a shining example of how literary devices drawn from fiction can lift non-fiction texts … The genre mix is perfect for My Mother: A Mystery, providing the text with both richness and life … It willl have an extra dimension for readers who have personal experience with the subject, but My Mother: A Mystery is suitable for anybody who wants to read powerful and special literature”
Aftenposten
“The book is about much more than the absence of love. It’s also about the author rediscovering her love for her mother. Lorentzen’s depiction of the 11 years from her parents’ divorce until her mother’s breakdown is also an entryway to understanding everyday happiness, and understanding which is in stark contrast to her mother’s journey into the heart of darkness”
Dagbladet
“An important contribution to a debate on health where mental illness is often dismissed as something passing and vague. Moreover, it is a moving declaration of love from a confused daughter to her suddenly confused mother”
Dagsavisen
“Lorentzen describes both her childhood and her relationship to her mother, with a trained eye for the revealing detail … Above all it’s the voice of the one who is left behind that keeps this together, moving us with the way it creates a story it’s that makes it possible to go on living … Lorentzen combines a direct tone with a careful composition in her story about her mother”
Dagens Næringsliv
“Despite the sad premise, the book is a life-affirming story of loss … It’s rare that I read a book that is so explicitly motivated by and filled with love … detailed and vivid … We get an insight into a very close mother-daughter relationship, and Lorentzen beautifully portrays a the twosomeness of childhood … This book has two distinct messages, that can hardly be repeated too often: The one who is mentally ill is much more than her diagnosis. And the one that is left behind has probably more than a tragedy to remember”
Klassekampen
“A literary non-fiction book that makes a real impression. Depression isn’t easy to understand, but the author manages to convey what it means to be next of kin”
VG
“A gripping story full of contrasts … Lorentzen’s book is moving and intense, easily read, thrillerishly suspenseful and funny, upsetting and gripping, and perhaps above all beautiful in its reconciliation with life’s complexity … It has a fertile and pioneering mix of non-fiction devices – references to newspaper headlines, weather observations, traditions and social attitudes – and fiction devices, such as narrative drive, captivating lead motives and some very gripping poetic depictions of tiny details that stick in the mind after the tragedy … A beautiful and moving confirmation that literature can heal, that talking about it helps”
Miriam Boulos, Lesende og skrivende blog
“Raw and beautiful about how [Lorentzen] gradually lost [her] mother”
Torstein Hvattum, Aftenposten, Best 3 Books of 2013
“Pulls the reader in immediately – not through forebodings of tragedy or trauma, but through a naked attempt to breathe life into a beloved mother who commits suicide when her daughter is 15.”
Ingunn Økland, Aftenposten, Best 3 Books of 2013
“An honest book of grief about depression and suicide, which grips your heart”
Kristine Isaksen, VG, Books of the Year 2013
“A daughter’s infatuating book about a mother, a suicide, a mystery”
Tom Egeland, VG, Books of the Year 2013
“This is a book about that particular mother, but the problem still concerns everybody who has lost somebody to suicide – and all the rest of us who stand there, passive and hesitant, wondering what to do”
Helga Lilleland, Varden, Books of the Year 2013
“A gripping story”
Marius Wulfsberg, Klassekampen, Books of the Year 2013
“When Trude Lorentzen was a teenager, her mother took her own life after a short mental illness. Ever since, Trude has wondered how a mother can give up her only child, and for a long time she used to think that her mother had a choice. Only many years later did Trude find the courage to confront her grief and feeling of loss. The book, which had a lot of attention in Norway, is about her memories of her mother and about how it feels when a parent takes her own life”
Thomas Lerner, Dagens Nyheter, Sweden, Books of the Year 2014
