A young mother follows her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, Denmark, where he teaches at the local school for adult education. Isolated, she is forced to find her way in a bewildering community and in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population.
A young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way, not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School, where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of it all, there’s the small matter of juggling her roles as mother to a newborn baby and advice columnist in the local newspaper. In this understated and hilarious novel, Stine Pilgaard conjures a tale of venturing into new and uncharted land, of human relationships, dilemmas, and the ways and byways of social intercourse.
About the Author
Stine Pilgaard is a graduate of the Danish Writers’ Academy and the University of Copenhagen. Her first novel, Min mor siger (“My Mother Says”), was a critical and commercial success, earning a nomination for the prestigious Danish Broadcasting Corporation Literature Prize and securing its author the Bodil and Jørgen Munch-Christensen Award for a debut author. In 2016, Pilgaard received the Danish Libraries’ Writers Award and was nominated for the Danish Readers’ Book Award for Lejlighedssange (“Songs for Special Occasions”). The Land of Short Sentences was an instant bestseller in Denmark, where it was released to critical acclaim. Pilgaard hails from the city of Aarhus and lives in Velling, an outlying rural community close to Ringkøbing in Jutland, Denmark.
About the Translator
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 Scandinavian American Foundation’s Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize for 2021. My Mother Says will be his second published translation.
Industry Reviews
"Small communities love their inside jokes, which become all the more (and paradoxically) hilarious if an outsider takes them seriously. Pilgaard's smart, layered parody will make you laugh without knowing exactly why, and then will keep you laughing at your self-consciousness." - VERONICA RAIMO, author of The Girl at the Door
"A master of irony lays down her weapons ... a deliciously crumbly novel oozing with awkward love." - Weekendavisen
"A sheer delight: Stine Pilgaard has penned a perfect comedy about normalcy." -Dagbladet Information
"The book of the year ... an absolutely fabulous novel about adjusting to midlife in the back of beyond." - Jyllands-Posten
"Stine Pilgaard has a pronounced talent for parody. She can write in such a way as to make you laugh out loud, bringing into the open the things we find embarrassing, capturing the absurdities of everyday life. Her dialogues are natural and precise, her language clear and succinct, and her references plain and recognizable. But beneath the lightness of her prose lies something other and more than comedy and rhetoric." - Berlingske
"Another Pilgaard pearl ... too funny for words and at the same time so keenly intelligent in its depictions. You love her characters to bits and understand so well their faltering steps on the road to community. A book you'll cherish reading-again and again and ..." - Sondag
"Stine Pilgaard's crisp prose and supreme timing can be spotted fifty books away ... an exquisite pearl of a book ... wonderfully funny, playful, and subtle in its crafting. But don't be mistaken: beneath the humor there's a worldly-wise voice with a finely honed ability to put into words all that's profound and beautiful and good about life ... This is one of the best works of Danish literature I've read in ages." - Litteratursiden
