The first time I found him dead, it was an ordinary Wednesday.

Being a veterinarian means deciding between life and death, knowing all about numbing pain and ending lives on a daily basis. To be a veterinarian’s daughter means assisting in surgeries and going on home-visits to the animal owners. It means diving for crabs in the summertime, insistently noticing all the nature and life that surrounds you. It means checking each day how big Dad’s pupils are, frightened that he’s done it for real this time, that he’s really dead. It means growing and learning to look at yourself through the eyes of others, while dad’s world is slowly shrinking.

Marie Kinge’s debut novel is a coming-of-age story from a childhood unlike most others. You can’t fool me is the story of a father and daughter, of how far or close the apple falls from the tree, about ending lives, about what you keep from your childhood, and what you leave behind.

Kinge’s writing is reminiscent of Tove Jansson in how she evokes the lightness of summer days and childhood curiosity, while her descriptions of the everyday life, marked by work, drugs, despair and suicide have more in common with Tove Ditlevsen.