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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
'An endearing, moving novel about family, fertility and finding your feet' Emma Gannon 'Venomous. Bitchy. Brilliant' Independent Ireland 'One of the best novels about singleness, siblings and approaching middle age I've ever read' Jan Carson, author of The Fire Starters 'A beautiful, slim but powerful look at the complicated process of deciding whether to start a family' Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic Years Ida is a forty-year-old architect, single and starting to panic. She's navigating Tinder and contemplating freezing her eggs, but forces these worries to the back of her mind as she sets off to the family cabin for her mother's sixty-fifth birthday. But family ties old and new begin to wear thin, out in the idyllic Norwegian countryside. Ida is fighting with her sister Marthe, flirting with Marhte's husband and winning the favour of Marthe's stepdaughter. Some supposedly wonderful news from her sister sets tensions simmering even further, building to an almighty clash between Ida and her sister, her mother, her whole family. Exhilarating, funny and unexpectedly devastating, Grown Ups asks what kind of adult you are without a family of your own. MARIE AUBERT made her debut in 2016 with the short story collection Can I Come Home With You, published to great acclaim in Norway. Grown Ups is her first novel; it won the Young People's Critics' Prize and was nominated for the Booksellers' Prize in Norway.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT GROWN UPS
‘Short, droll and highly readable, Grown Ups is a slice of life that rings painfully true’
‘I absolutely loved this book’
‘I would strongly recommend to anyone who is looking for a holiday read with a punch’
‘The pages just flew by’
‘This is a fantastically crafted novel’
‘Sensitive, emotional, and littered with the kind of tongue in cheek humour that I love’
‘Very clever, wonderfully translated’
‘The Scandinavian setting was the icing on the cake, it was perfect escapism!’
‘A complex, layered story’
‘Every word [was] perfectly judged’
‘Full of simmering tension’
‘A potent little gem of a novel… Outstanding!’
‘A really poignant read with humour and drama scattered amongst the pages’
‘An excellent examination of family dynamics… I loved this’
‘Perfectly formed’
‘A well written and expertly translated slice of modern life. Would thoroughly recommend’
‘Painfully honest, and dark with a hint of humour. Grown Ups tells it like it is’
‘Well-written, thoughtful and original’
‘A book that drew me in from the first pages’
‘It’s funny, elegant and unexpectedly dark. A brilliant little book that I know I will return to’
CONTENTS
GROWN UPS
Chapter 1
Other people’s children, always, everywhere. It’s always worse on the bus, when I’m trapped with them. My back is sweaty and I’m feeling irritable. The sun streams through the dirty windows, the bus has been full since we left Drammen, and more people pile on in Kopstad and Tønsberg and Fokserød, they’re forced to stand in the aisle, swaying as they hold on tight, in spite of the supposed guarantee of a seat for every passenger. In the seat behind me, a father sits with his child, a boy of about three, maybe, he’s watching videos on an iPad with the sound turned up, garish children’s animations. The music is loud and tinny, the father tries to turn the volume down every so often but the boy howls crossly and turns it back up again.
I feel queasy after trying to read my book, and the battery on my phone is almost dead, so I can’t listen to a podcast either, all I can hear are the plinky-plonks of the metallic-sounding melodies. As we approach the Telemark tunnel, I can no longer hold my tongue and turn to face the father, he’s a young hipster sort with a beard and a stupid little man bun. I flash him a wide smile and ask if he could turn the 8 sound down just slightly, please. I can hear the snappiness in my tone, he can tell that part of me is relishing this, but they can’t sit there on a full express bus in July with the sound blaring like that, they just can’t.
‘Uh, sure,’ the hipster dad says, then rubs his neck. ‘I mean, is it bothering you?’
He speaks with a broad Stavanger accent.
‘It’s a bit loud,’ I reply, still smiling.
He snatches the iPad from his child’s hands with a surly look on his face and the boy starts wailing at the top of his lungs, surprised and furious. The old couple sitting in front of me turn around and flash me a dismayed expression, not the child and his father, but me.
‘That’s what happens when you won’t let me turn the sound down,’ his father says. ‘It’s bothering the lady, so you can’t watch anymore.’
The bus turns into the petrol station, where it’s scheduled to stop for a comfort break and coffee stop, and the boy lies prostrate across the seats, wailing, as I pick up my bag and hurry down the aisle leaving the sound of crying behind me.
Kristoffer and Olea are waiting at Vinterkjær. Marthe isn’t with them. Kristoffer is so tall, Olea so short. She’s due to start school in the autumn, I think she looks far too little for that, slim and delicate.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Kristoffer says. He gives me a long hug, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing me tight. 9
‘You too,’ I say. ‘Look how long your hair is now, Olea,’ I say, tugging gently on her ponytail.
‘Olea learnt to swim yesterday,’ Kristoffer says.
Olea grins, revealing a gap where four top teeth had once been.
‘I swam without Daddy holding onto me,’ she says.
‘Wow,’ I say, ‘did you really? That’s brilliant.’
‘Marthe took a picture,’ Olea says. ‘You can see it when we get back.’
‘I’m guessing that Marthe was lounging around by the water’s edge,’ I say, putting my bag in the boot of the car.
‘Yes,’ Olea says, looking delighted in the back seat. ‘She was being really, really lazy.’
‘We don’t say things like that, Olea,’ Kristoffer says, starting the engine. ‘You know that.’
I turn to look at Olea and wink, whispering to her:
‘Marthe is a bit lazy.’
Kristoffer clears his throat.
‘I’m allowed to say it,’ I say. ‘I’ve got special permission to make jokes about that sort of thing.’
It’s so tempting, it does Marthe good to be given a kick up the bum every now and then, and it’s so nice to wink at Olea, to make her giggle and watch as her eyes grow wide with glee at how funny I am. We drive along the coastal road, and I tell Kristoffer about the hipster dad and the boy with the iPad at full blast.
‘And people got annoyed with me,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t the one making the racket. The boy’s dad was really grumpy about it.’ 10
Kristoffer has a familiar scent, it’s the cabin, paint, salt water, body.
‘It’s not always easy to calm them down, you know,’ he says.
‘But you didn’t let three-year-old Olea sit on a packed bus with an iPad at full volume,’ I say.
‘Well, no,’ Kristoffer replies. ‘But people get so annoyed at children, they don’t know what it’s like. You have to let kids be kids.’
Kristoffer is always saying things like that, let kids be kids, it’s important to listen to your body, things like that.
‘But there’s a difference between crying and having the volume turned right up,’ I say.
I realise I’m trying too hard; I’m exposing myself now, revealing that this is something I don’t understand, and Kristoffer shrugs and flashes a smile.
‘Having the volume turned right up on a full bus,’ I repeat.
‘Breathe into your belly, Ida,’ he says, patting my thigh.
I open my mouth to speak, but I stop myself, he’ll never get it anyway. I can tell Marthe, she tends to agree with me about things like this, it annoys her when Olea makes a racket. There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell her too, not as soon as we arrive, but tonight, after we’ve both had a few glasses of wine and Kristoffer is out of the way, when he’s off putting Olea to bed, then I’ll tell her.
Chapter 2
I was in gothenburg two weeks ago, I took the train there alone, stayed in a hotel and walked a few blocks to a fertility clinic the next morning. It looked like any other doctor’s office, only more pleasant, brighter, with yucca plants in large pots and tranquil-looking images of mothers and babies or eggs and birds on the walls. The doctor’s name was Ljungstedt, and from his office there was a full view of the gym across the street. I found myself staring directly at people running on the treadmill and lifting weights. He pronounced my name the Swedish way, not like Ee-dah, but more like Ooh-dah, the first syllable lingering at the back of his throat as he tapped away at his computer keyboard without looking at me. He went through the process quickly, at what point in my cycle I’d start hormone treatment, how they’d remove the eggs, the fact that today he’d just be running a few blood tests and carrying out a gynaecological examination.
‘Oh yes, freezing one’s eggs has become ever so popular,’ he said, as if he were selling me something, even though I was already there. 12
‘So I gather,’ I replied with a chuckle.
Everything felt open, the summer holidays were just around the corner, it was lovely and warm in Gothenburg and I’d reserved a table somewhere to savour a nice lunch with some expensive white wine, to toast the fact I’d be spending my savings on having my eggs removed and banked, on opening an egg account.
‘It’s a wonderful opportunity,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have a boyfriend or don’t want children quite yet.’
‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of going ahead with things after the holidays.’
‘Perhaps you’ll have a boyfriend in a few years from now, you could use them when you’re forty-two or forty-three,’ he said, tapping away on his keyboard. ‘That would be wonderful.’
I tried to picture this boyfriend, imagining a tall man with a beard standing there in the office with me in a few years from now. I couldn’t picture his facial expressions, but I imagined him putting his arm around me in the lift on the way out, we’re going to be parents, Ida. One day, I thought as I lay there in the gynaecology chair, one day things have to work out, one day, after a long line of married and otherwise committed and uninterested and uninteresting men, things have to work out, just lying there made me believe both man and child might materialise, just the fact that I was there and actually doing it was a promise that there was more to come, one day.
The doctor and I looked at my uterus on the ultrasound screen, he asked what I did for a living and I told him I was an architect.
13‘You must draw some lovely houses,’ he said.
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘It’s a pretty big company, most of our work is focused on public buildings and that kind of thing, town planning.’ I stopped myself, I was meandering into a lengthy explanation of who designed what, but it felt pointless as I lay there, legs spread, apparatus inside me. As I was on my way out the door to have blood tests done, still slimy and cold inside from the ultrasound jelly he’d used, he said that we’d speak again in two weeks’ time, once the results were in, and that we’d make a plan about when to begin, when everything would begin.
Chapter 3
I check my phone, no missed calls from any Swedish numbers. Kristoffer takes the bends at high speed, I feel slightly queasy and try to avert my gaze from a half-full bottle of Fanta and an empty crisp packet lying at my feet. He’s grown stouter, his cheeks rounder, I wonder if he and Olea sit in the car and secretly make their way through snacks and soft drinks together when Marthe isn’t around. His arms are tanned. Marthe told me they had a few nice days to begin with, they’d ventured out to the little islands and had been swimming several times, but it’s been changeable since then, so I’ve packed both my swimsuit and my woollen jumper.
‘When are Mum and Stein coming?’ I ask.
‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It’ll be nice to have an evening to ourselves tonight. Marthe’s not quite herself.’
‘Oh joy,’ I reply.
‘You know how it is,’ Kristoffer says, scratching at his beard. ‘Hormones.’
He says it in a way that suggests I understand, you knowhow it is; he knows perfectly well that I’ve got no idea what it’s like, but still I nod, sure, I get it.16
‘Poor Marthe,’ I say, crossing my arms so my fingertips reach my sweaty armpits. I try to work out if I smell.
