But now something has changed, the time has come to tell, to reveal his secrets before the deadly dogs of stomach cancer hunt him down. While waiting for the arrival of his children, Tollak reconstructs his past life with Ingeborg, the slender and sweet figure, her erudite way of speaking, their everyday life arrhythmic.
In Tollak’s life only one person remained close to him, faithful and loyal: Oddo, known as Oddoloscemo in the village, is the third child adopted into the family. It was Tollak who wanted it, who imposed it on Ingeborg and her children when their natural mother abandoned him. He is a problematic boy but he is the only one who accepts without reservation the almost ancestral times and movements that still mark the life of the protagonist narrator.
The children, in fact, refused to understand; his wife Ingeborg, similarly, as much as she loved him, she could no longer tolerate the stubbornness with which her husband clung to the past, and suffered for it. The arguments and the attacks of anger that arose from it, combined withalcoholism by Tollak, have filtered into the story from the interior time of the protagonist who now tries to truly reconstruct the steps that led to the disappearance of his wife.
With a snappy and hybrid writing that follows the protagonist’s train of thought, Tore Renberg in My IngeborgFor Fazi publisherhe managed to give life to a complex, multifaceted characterit’s at a family historymirror of a Norwegian culture, murky and disturbing. The author has done something great, he has managed to give life to a book that hides its true nature up to the middle. My Ingeborgit is indeed a love story that turns into something annoying, uncomfortable, disconcertingand it does so by sowing small breadcrumbs along the entire journey.
The result is a high voltage thriller already become literary best sellerawarded best book of the year by Norwegian booksellers and finalist of the 2024 European Strega Prize.
