Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Ebbs & Flows

Norwegian title: Flo & fjære

Kristian S. Hæggernes

To ten-year-old Daniel the summer holidays at the family’s cabin by the sea is one of the highlights of the year. There he can safely play with his Lego without other children making fun of him, and he gets to spend a lot of time with his grandpa, who he hasn’t seen much this year since his grandpa has been very ill.

His big sister and cousins are sleeping in a tent in the garden. They’re preoccupied with the handsome boy at the gas station and live in a different world from Daniel, a world he isn’t very curious about anyway. He’s more interested in his Lego-people, who have travelled from the castle they live in in his room, to explore the forest around the cabin.

But this summer there are boys around his own age in the neighbouring cabin. And a little girl is stranded on a reef and must be rescued. Daniel prefers being on the water over being in the water. But why does his mother yell at his grandpa when he’s going for a swim? And is Daniel allowed to adopt the cat a woman asks if he wants?

Ebbs & Flows is a novel about the possibilities and limitations of childhood, and about the incipient realisation that it can’t last forever.