Home to Me

He is unfaithful when he is 33 years old, and he is still unfaithful when he is 62 years old. He cheats on his first wife with the woman who will become his second wife. He cheats on her, too. He drifts from affair to affair, from woman to woman, from his kind, wise and stable Wenche to the temperamental actress Marion and on to other, younger women. And he means it seriously every time. Every time he sees opportunities. Every time he thinks he can manage to handle things without hurting anyone.

Quotes from reviews:

 "Home to Me contains such incredible amounts of pain, regret and despair. It's a hypnotizing read, like being sucked down in a whirlpool. Marstein's prose is feather light and exact, and in harmony with both Ove's itching boredom and his world-shattering passions. She breathes life into the routine family dinners as well as breakdowns, and she always knows precisely when to pull back and give the reader room to breathe. I manage to get both desparate and angry, which is always a good testimony for a book. Home to Me is a triumph - a sad one, but still a triumph."
Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden

"a credible and intelligent depiction of a human life longing for something different ... A novel which by its shear example shows the possibilties of fiction, that literature can reach so much deeper than journalistic clichees and dramaturgic writing-for-effect ... An observant and patient depiction of everyday life, carried through with an intelligence of language that can capture both everyday details and human behaviour with the same sharp gaze"
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden

"For well over 30 years we follow the handsome doctor Ove Haugli i Trude Marstein's infernally piercing novel Home to Me ... In Home to Me she again shows her class. Through sharp dialogues she lets her characters reveal themselves. It's everyday. It's to the point. And it's so pitch perfect that you soon forget that her Ove is a character in a novel and start getting angry with him for real ... quite simply a wonderful novel, written by someone with the ability to see through people and at the same time find a clear and everyday way to express everyday life."
Oskarshamnstidningen, Sweden

"With her dizzying storytelling Marstein can transform such an everyday theme into an epic and engrossing story ... this rare kind of prose can be so precise and yet so hypnotizing in its realism that it's difficult to free oneself from its grasp. This hypnotic power makes me think of Karl Ove Knausgård and even Linn Ullmann, to compare with two contemporary Norwegian writers on the same level.
Uppsala tidning, Sweden

"a flow and a tempo which makes the story ceaselessly exciting"
Aftonbladet, Sweden

"A complex novel about love and infidelity ... it's very well done"
Borås Tidning, Sweden

"The strange thing is that you still don't get tired of this novel, whose skilled prose keeps a high tempo even in the less eventful parts, with commas keeping the pulsating beat."
Kvällsposten, Sweden 

"Hits the reader like unusually noisy static on the inner lines; in my many years as a critic I have rarely experienced a similiar reaction ... One of the novel's numerous qualities is that there is no soggy moral at the end telling us either that the proper thing is to throw yourself into the maelstrom of physical delight or to walk the plank into the increasing predictability of a protracted marriage. Trude Marstein's purpose is to dissect the anatomy of the pain Ove's indecision brings on himself ... This is done in such an insightful, precise and infectious way that you want to both beat up and hug this lonesome doctor."
****** 6/6 stars
Politiken, Denmark

"[I rate] Trude Marstein among the two or three greatest Norwegian writers ... Danish readers haven't really discovered how much human insight woven into prose free from cliches, and put into large compositions that this writer actually possesses."
Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark

"a captivating novel about a man who just has to have a mistress ... You would think it would become boring. But it doesn't, because the women Ove meets and deceives are so different from each other ... she has described Ove so convincingly that you understand that for him it couldn't be any other way"
Weekendavisen, Denmark

"wise and insisting  ... The nice thing about  Trude Marstein's merciless portrait of the psychology of a womanizer is the encirclement of the repeated psychological mechanism dictating that everyday life must be supplemented by the experience of intensity in new sexual relations ... an important book with great human insight which persistently points out the value of empathy and long-term emotional commitment."
****** 5/6 stars
Berlingske, Denmark

"The author never looks down at Ove's life, and she doesn't judge him either ... That judgement is left to the reader ... And it is precisely in this that Marstein's books are unusal and unusually intense ... Judge for yourself. That is what Trude Marstein demands of her reader. That is what is so fascinating. Also because her exploration of the anatomy of infidelity is so universal."
Fyens Stiftstidende, Denmark

“It’s been years since I read a novel better than Trude Marstein’s latest, Home to Me, plumbing more profoundly, more accurately and more exuberantly (…) My recommendation is unambiguous: Read it!
Tønsbergs Blad, Norway

“A ruthless, impressive novel about a man who seeks affirmation and dreams of genuine contact, but constantly ends up in a dead end.”
Dagens Næringsliv, Norway

“Home to Me is both typical of the author and surprisingly different. Effortless and entertaining, it is uncomfortably sharp at the edges. Trude Marstein at her very best, in other words.”
Dagsavisen, Norway

"Home to Me makes an excellent job of relating, through an examination of clichés, why we always long to be in a different place from where we are, yearning for something different from what we have, and why this is both totally absurd and just as completely unavoidable.”
Dagbladet, Norway

“Trude Marstein depicts everyday life and various psychological profiles so aptly that you would think she had filmed living people and read their thoughts.”
Dag og Tid, Norway

Please download sample translation: