My Mother Says
The narrator’s long-term girlfriend has just broken things off, forcing her to move back in with her father, a Pink Floyd–loving priest. While she desperately tries to convince her girlfriend to reconsider, the rest of the world bombards her with advice: from her childhood friend Mulle to her kindly therapist to her overbearing mother and card-playing father. Bumbling through the fog of disillusionment, the narrator gives herself permission to grieve, philosophise, and be generally outrageous until at last she sees a light at the end of the tunnel. My Mother Says is a compendium of conversations between people who talk past one another in a universe of misplaced good intentions. In this whirlwind of memories, confessions, temper tantrums, and declarations of love Pilgaard’s sheer affection for her characters turns the pain of a broken heart into a heartwarming comedy of errors.
'Reeling from a breakup, a young Danish woman recovers her sense of self through conversations with parents, friends, and strangers. A sweet and quirky debut about heartbreak, memory, and the endless potential of language.' ―Kirkus Reviews
Stine Pilgaard is a graduate of the Danish Writers’ Academy and the University of Copenhagen. Her first novel, My Mother Saysand earning a nomination for the prestigious Danish Broadcasting Corporation Literature Prize. The Land of Short Sentences was an instant bestseller and critics’ favorite. It won the prestigious Weekendavisen Litteraturpris and the Danish Booksellers’ Association’s Golden Laurels award.
Hunter Simpson is originally from North Carolina and lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. Stine Pilgaard’s The Land of Short Sentences (World Editions, 2022) was his first published literary translation and won the Scandinavian American Foundation’s Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize for 2021. My Mother Says is his second published translation.
More books by author
