Today Me, Tomorrow You
Peter Venn lives alone in an apartment directly below his mother. He translates books at his own kitchen table and goes for evening walks in the area around the cemetery. He has a rich inner life, but there’s wretchedly little else going on. He longs for the world outside, but has yet to break free from his mother. He feels trapped by her sounds, her way of being and above all her version of his father’s final years; his father who disappeared into the big bedroom when Peter was two years old, and who stayed there until he died five years later. Peter has no memories of his father, only a powerful longing.
This Friday Peter eats supper with his mother, just like he has been reluctantly doing for years. He knows what questions he needs to ask – but does he dare? And does he have the courage to approach others?
Kjersti A. Skomsvold has written a wonderful novel about loneliness and the liberating force of love, about longing for death and fearing death. It is a novel full of humorous earnestness and extraordinarily inventive prose.
