FREDRIKSTAD (news): Suddenly she stands in front of us, shockingly gentle. Her books are known for the opposite: anger, pettiness, jealousy, all the wrong emotions. A dark, furry cat slinks forward in the grass, is picked up for a cuddle. A curious twin daughter greets nicely. The staircase is charmingly crooked and full of flower pots. Does all the grudge really come from this idyll? – Poor cat, she has no idea what awaits her next week, says Monica and gently puts the animal down again. The unfashionable voice Monica Isakstuen spends a lot of time on the darker sides of life, especially in close relationships. In the new book “De små jentene” she portrays several generations under the same cabin roof. The reviewers love it. People recognize each other. In recent years, she has been queen of the unpopular truths in Norwegian contemporary literature. – I felt like roaring when I read, Crown Princess Mette-Marit said of the breakthrough book “Be kind to the animals” from 2016. (Her Royal Highness also called the book “brilliantly good”.) In that book, we meet an unhappy newly divorced mother. She looks towards the animal kingdom to confirm the nagging (but unfashionable) feeling that the child is after all mostly hers, not her father’s. Isakstuen received the Brage Prize, a bunch of readers and solid media attention. She hit a nerve. She has continued to provoke. Friendship is overrated, it must be possible to break up with a best friend. Small children demand too much, yes, you feel like hitting. Monica Isakstuen writes such things. Here she lives in reality, in green surroundings, with her son and twin girls and her husband. COUNTRY CALM: No roaring at the Isakstuen family today (although Monica claims that the daughters were actually arguing just a minute before we arrived). We leave Pus and the picturesque house and drive to the cabin paradise Hvalerøyene. Monica used to visit her grandmother and grandfather there in the summer. The Swabergen from there appear in the new book. But beautiful surroundings are no guarantee of a good atmosphere. Huttekos, hytteknus We look forward and look forward to the summer holidays, but now on the other side of the summer of 2023, some of us may be whispering: It’s a bit okay with everyday life, isn’t it? It can get claustrophobic too, right? Not all families are made to be on top of each other 24/7, for example in a cosy, but creaky, cabin in the archipelago. This is the scene for Monica Isakstuen’s new novel. It has been easy to find inspiration, from my own life and that of others. – I talk a lot with friends after the summer holidays. We ventilate, I hear about intergenerational holidays in summer cottages that are too cramped and small and all sorts of things. There is a lot to feed on, she says. CHILDHOOD MEMORIES: Bathing with grandma and a particularly nice pit she used to lie in. But Monica Isakstuen doesn’t dare look for the specific pit, “I’m afraid it’s different than I remember”. Photo: Javier Auris / news The Norwegian cabin is a place with many layers of meaning and significance, far beyond the functional or aesthetic. A perfect scene for drama. “A furious attempt to break away from heritage and environment” wrote news about the new book, while Morgenbladet seemed to hear “grumbling just behind”. What’s under the surface? From mother you came, to mother you will become In the book “De små jentene” an adult daughter with twin daughters comes to the family cabin where mother/grandmother is waiting. The novel revolves around the adult daughter’s irritation at her mother’s strict regime. “The little girls certainly don’t know the system and all the rules related to what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say” But it doesn’t help to just blame the mother. – If we think that the I in the book hears the mother’s voice within herself, it is just as much herself that she is frustrated with, says the author. We keep trying to turn away from what is ourselves, but it doesn’t work. When you’re trying to be a cool parent, but hear yourself say the same things your parents said, that you should never repeat. Or when you rediscover your inner 16-year-old’s fiery defiance in an instant, whether it’s been ten or thirty years since you were a teenager. Then it’s easy to get irritated! But then there is something more here, too. Monica eventually discovered a fierce yearning in the text. – What does the I-person long for? – Being together for real, getting to not be in your role. Both with the children and with the mother, she says. The “role” as a responsible adult can mean, for example, instructing the children in “this is how we do it at the cabin”, because “this is how we have always done it”. Or prioritizing a long breakfast over swimming! Now! The place they are in, the cabin where the I-person has been a child himself, is the gateway between childhood and adulthood. Old memories well up. Once the adult mother was a nine-year-old girl herself, who found a conch at the bottom and thought: “I will always remember this.” Isakstuen was strongly influenced by the film “Lille mamma” by Céline Sciamma in the work on the book. The mother in the film suddenly appears the same age as the daughter. TWINS HERE TOO: Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz play mother and daughter when they meet and play in the forest. Photo: PRODUCTION COMPANY: LILIES FILMS – I wish I could manage to not only remember what it was like to be a child, but to meet my daughters with the thought and feeling in my head. The film helped me with that, says Isakstuen. Some things are just much more important to nine-year-olds than to adults. Standing on your hands under water, for example. – There is so much they want to show! “I can’t look at you all the time,” I say sometimes, it’s really a terrible thing to say. The sadness that all this will one day be over also seeps through the book. Soon the swimming, squealing little girls nagging “look at me!” also a memory. It’s something to cry about. – Are “the little girls” the twins whose half I greeted? – Ingrid and Elida often ask “are you writing about us”. I tend to say that I am deeply inspired by life with them. It’s not them, but it’s a declaration of love for my little girls inside this, says Monica Isakstuen. At other times, it has been demanding to surrender oneself in the books. The choice In “Be kind to the animals” (2016), the mother struggles to celebrate Christmas without her daughter. In the book “Race” (2018), she has a violent anger towards her own twins. So yes, the questions have come from acquaintances. Are you really doing… well, at home? How was Christmas? A little fearful, a little caring. – I live on a small piece of shit. Excuse me, it’s really nice here. But it is clear, it is not always easy for people to separate my literature from my life, she says. She tried to get away from the eternal nagging about the family with the novel “Mine venner” (2021) (which also became a play at the Riksteateret). The question it raised was also provocative: “Do we really need that many friends?” Monica herself does not do that, she has come to the conclusion. Well, she has good friends. But still: She loves writing so much! In order to live the life of a writer, she had to make some choices. As a young adult, she worked in marketing in a publishing house, there was a lot of partying, “a very social job”. And it was always about other people’s texts. When Monica was 28, her father died. – Two years later I was sitting on the floor in the apartment in Oslo. I had bought it for the inheritance, but also with a large bank loan. I calculated and calculated and realized that no, I can’t go down to 80 percent work once! There was no space to write. And writing was what Monica Isakstuen wanted! She had to take action. The machine Monica The answer at the time was to sell the Oslo house and move to Fredrikstad. – The wish was to be in peace. And now I can say it myself, because so many people point it out all the time: I have become productive. I can feel the pressure. 16 years after the move, she has a twelve-year-old son, an ex-husband, a husband, nine-year-old twins and an ancient house, so Monica Isakstuen does not live in complete peace. But a new novel and a new play this autumn support the claim of productivity. This is the recipe: A normal day starts with children who have to have food and get to school. When it gets quiet in the stone house at 8.30, there is writing. That means full-screen mode on Word and mobile away. When it’s 12 o’clock, she usually puts on her running shoes. The everyday round is seven to ten kilometres. The husband is currently training for a half-marathon and jogs for walks of over two miles at weekends. When he returns, Monica sometimes does the same, just to “check if I can do it”. (She does.) The 2023 edition of Monica Isakstuen is simply in terrific shape. But hush! No one should know this. – No, no, no, I’m not on Strava (Instagram for fitness people, editor’s note). I have never taken part in a race, I don’t want it to be a competition or an image, says Monica. She has also stopped drinking alcohol (“not necessarily forever, then”). – I didn’t really like a glass of wine, I preferred a whole bucket. And then there was a pandemic and more regular everyday drinking for a period. But then I really like the “crispe”, clear head when I wake up, she explains. What she doesn’t like, however, is being put in a stall as a health freak. – I have an inherent defiance of all kinds of booths, actually. The ancient writer/artist myth, the bohemian who drinks too much… but also the good-girl-like figure. She shuddered at the thought. Monica Isakstuen will not become a cliché. Soon after, she laughs; there’s something fun about all these perpetually running middle-class writers, too. The walks work to get the head circulating and keep the back healthy. Monica Isakstuen has counted on it, she knows she is running out of time. This autumn she will be 47. There are so many novels and plays she wants to write! In recent years, she has made a name for herself as a playwright. Earlier this year, she received the Ibsen prize. She depicts the relationships between us humans in a way that is “deeply recognisable”, said the jury. Soon she will have the premiere of a play that once again stirs the pot with the most difficult things in life. Can the mother abandon the child and still be a good mother? Still angry The play “Dear Albert” has borrowed its title from children’s books’ Albert Åberg. He lives with only his father, without us readers having problematized it so violently. But what happens when the mother appears and tries to explain why she is not with her child? Yes, it is difficult to keep up with all the things Monica Isakstuen makes. It is no less confusing that she describes the play “Dear Albert” as a thematic continuation of the 2016 novel “Be kind to the animals” (the book the crown princess would roar at). Monica Isakstuen herself had her son smaller than his father for a period when he was small. It became difficult to know whether it was her inner voice that disliked it the most, or whether it was others who watched and judged. Must there be something wrong with the mother if a child is with the father? The performance is deeply rooted in our culture, says Monica Isakstuen. – I want to kill that show. It was perhaps only best for the child or the family as a whole, then and there, she says. Author Monica Isakstuen still clicks with a certain type of parent: those who have strong opinions about other people’s way of being a mother. And yes, to be completely honest, here mothers are probably the worst. – Now it’s not so much about myself anymore, I have more distance. However, hearing women speak confidently about other people’s parenting still makes me very angry. Photo: Javier Auris / news It is, in a way, easier to treat such close-to-your-own-life themes in stage texts than in novels. She feels quite hardened, but still… – In a play, the playwright is very invisible. It’s kind of delicious. She has noticed that all the brooding/writing about gorra in close relationships has its positive sides. Moment of contact It’s not like she has become a perfect parent herself, writing is no vaccine. But: – I have experienced that I feel calmer when I have written down my thoughts, she says. We are back at the house. On the stairs, the poor cat Inga paws again. Or, poor and poor? The cat is not to be euthanized, we learn, it is only to be given an adopted son! In order for things to run smoothly in the modern cat family, the family has been given tips on giving extra love to Inga in the future. – “The way we had extra fun with you when your little sisters were born!” I said to Helmer at twelve. “Actually, Mom,” he replied, all teenager. Monica Isakstuen laughs again. Soon she will pick up her son from football school. And maybe there in the car, while they talk about the kitten coming or the next football cup, moments of real … Contact can suddenly arise. These are moments she collects as a mother, and what she wants most as a writer. When we readers recognize ourselves, it gives motivation to continue the attempt to write something true about the people. It’s like a run of over two miles. Monica Isakstuen just wants to check if she can do it. Hey Hey! Thanks for reading this far. If you think something, or wonder about something, or have tips for other matters, send me an e-mail! More people who have written a book/theatre that arouses attention:
ttn-69
The generation cabin can be driven in the book De små jentene by Monica Isakstuen – Culture
