Trude Marstein has just published a new novel – something that doesn’t happen every year. ‘No, it doesn’t,’ smiles the author. ‘It’s six years since my last novel – too long. Three years is okay, but not six.’
There are several reasons why it has taken the prize-winning author a full six years to write Så mye hadde jeg (‘Conscience‘, not been published in English yet). One is that she now has a three-year-old, who was born three years into the writing process. Another is that she never quite managed to decide on the framework for the novel, and struggled to get started.
‘Yes, that’s true. I struggled for example with trying to find out what sex the main character should be, and ended up with a female protagonist. The last time I wrote from a female perspective was 18 years ago. I think it’s easier to write from a male perspective. I get a kind of... foreignness for free in doing so. I can achieve this writing from the point of view of women, too, but not in the same way. And I actually changed the sex of the protagonist several times during the writing process. It suddenly felt dangerous to be writing from a female perspective, but it seemed cowardly to change it. Then I came to a point where it was absolutely clear that she isn’t me, and then it was okay’, says Marstein.
Monika from 13 to 58
At the start of the novel we meet 13-year-old Monika, who understands that everything she experiences will one day belong to another time. Later we meet Monika at 27, when she’s the mistress of an older professor. Then she’s 37 and living with Geir; they’ve had Maiken, who rhythmically sucks her dummy and has a strip of bare skin at the back of her head. Then Monika is 46 and owns a shed full of quarrelsome chickens; she feels that life consists of nothing but futile attempts to put things together. Then she’s 52 and sees her mother’s face staring back at her from the mirror above the fruit and vegetable aisle at the supermarket.
Så mye hadde jeg is a novel about the longing for a meaningful life and the desire to belong. But it also explores the feeling that everything eventually slips away, that nothing can be held onto forever – and that one might neither want nor be able to find a sense of belonging with anyone. ‘What is it about this woman that’s so engaging, Trude Marstein?’ ‘This is a woman who loses a lot over the course of the novel. We follow her from the age of 13, in 1973, until she’s 58. I started writing about her from different perspectives, and after a time she became interesting. She also becomes clearer and clearer as the novel progresses, eventually becoming someone who seems familiar to us.’
A selvportrait?
‘No, she’s not me. She becomes an older professor’s mistress at one point. Which I, for example, have never been’. Marstein laughs. ‘It’s a cliché. I use a lot of clichés.’
How does the work during an intensive writing phase look like?
‘I work best very early in the mornings. I get up at 05.30 and start writing, so I can work for at least an hour before the kids wake up. I work best right after I’ve just got up, and don’t want to spend that time making sandwiches for packed lunches and finding clothes.’
Always wanted to write
Trude Marstein always knew that she’d become a writer, and wrote in secret from an early age. After studying creative writing in Bø, published her debut collection of prose Sterk sult, plutselig kvalme (‘Strong Hunger, Sudden Nausea‘, not been published in English yet), for which she received the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas’ Debutant Prize – the first of a number of awards.
Marstein is keen to keep her own attitudes and opinions out of her work. ‘The characters have to be there in the story without me defending or judging them. They’re simply there, living their lives. For me, the challenge is to make an average person to whom nothing much really happens interesting, through that character’s intense presence in reality.’
For more information
Gyldendal: Trude Marstein
Gyldendal Agency: Så mye hadde jeg
Books from Norway: Så mye hadde jeg