Literature and Fiction · Hardback

No One is Looking Out for Us

Norwegian title: Det er ingen som passer på oss

Linn Strømsborg

It's New Year's Eve and Iris is celebrating with her boyfriend and old friends. The mood is good, midnight is approaching and the sky has already started to pop a little. Then she receives a message from her ex. He was once her very first boyfriend. An ex she hasn't seen in years. Iris doesn't want to open it, but she opens it. The message is only one sentence long: "Do you remember if I was ever violent towards you?"

No One is Looking Out for Us is a novel about physical as well as psychological abuse in close relationships. About the absolute insecurity that women live with. Because they don't know. Because they can't know. If they're really with him, safe in their own home, safe in their own bed. Strømsborg also shows us how the responsibility for the truth is all too easily relaxed from the abuser to the victim, when he asks if she can remember what it was like, and if he really did something wrong. It's harrowing and everyday, and harrowing because it's so everyday.

"No One is Looking Out for Us is an easy-to-read, airy, and engaging novel where timely questions about violence, power, sex, and consent are never far away, and where its use value is indisputable."Dagens Næringsliv