Repetition

In a Norwegian November, when it is dark at waking and dark at sleeping, a novelist in her sixties sits next to a teenaged girl at the opera. Through their padded jackets, she feels a dreadfully familiar tension conducted from the parents seated on her far side.

She thinks back to her sixteenth year. The year she first got drunk and the year she first had sex with a boy. A year of being circled by an anxious, hawkish mother and, at a notable distance, her silent father. The year her family made an unspoken decision, and an unspeakable sacrifice.

Such reflections are at the heart of Repetition, immersing the reader in memories and decisions that ripple through time.