In Mascara Sleep, we meet Edit, a woman in her early 30s. She is traveling north on the Hurtigruten from Harstad. She isn't traveling to seek great adventure. She says she's traveling because she's been told to leave.

Her luggage contains a heart that has been broken on several levels: A difficult relationship with her sister, an elective abortion, an unexpressed oeuvre as a painter, a cohabitation with Egil that was perhaps a bit too constructed, and another married man. The stillness on board and all the hours in the cabin evoke memories from her childhood, young adult and adult life. And out on deck, Edit is greeted with raw coldness and an all-consuming darkness.

The language of this novel is stark, hard and diminished. Mascara Sleep is a reluctant, painful and humorous novel. This is Caroline Kaspara Palonen's fourth novel. All of her books have explored various forms of exclusion and other questions connected to identity.