Conscience

Conscience is an impressively dense, sharp-eyed and intense novel about contemporary women’s lives in a well-oiled middle-class Norway, a life that Marstein sees in all its aspects, typical and drab.

In each chapter, the narrator lands at a point in the main character Monika’s life: Monika at 13 years old, Monika at 20, at 27, 37, 46, 50, 54, soon to be 60. The sense of presence is total at every age, her temperament changing as the years go by, and the translator, Lotta Eklund, has succeeded in conveying the proper intensity.

Conscience is probably Marstein’s most accessible novel to date, an intense, riveting family drama over almost five decades. It has become an immersive reading experience that does not shy away from difficult, shocking questions, with a protagonist who provokes both sympathy and irritation.

... you rarely get such a strong sense of actually seeing another person’s life in distilled and undiluted form as in Trude Marstein’s latest novel.

Marstein’s triumph (...) The romance is experienced as, at the same time recognizable and amazingly alien. This is due not least to the language and the flow of narrative, the novel’s organization of the rich material that constitutes Monica’s life.

Marstein belongs to the top level of Norwegian contemporary authors,

I think that Trude Marstein will dominate the literary scene this autumn. (...) It's beautiful and extraordinary well written