Narrative Non-fiction · Hardback

Like It or Lump It

Norwegian title: Kul i brystet. Året vi ble syke

Line Norman HjorthVigdis Hjorth

Like It or Lump It is a book about the sudden upheaval and change a serious diagnosis can cause.

In the spring of 2023, mum-of-two Line Norman Hjorth was diagnosed with breast cancer. Barely six months later her mother – author Vigdis Hjorth – received the exact same diagnosis. In this book, where the narrative switches between mother and daughter, we follow the two women through their treatment as both patient and next of kin. Two roles that were completely new for them both, and two roles which can be difficult to balance - and which mother and daughter manage in very different ways. They go through the highs and lows, both in terms of medical treatment and their parent-child relationship. But at least they both got new boobs as part of the process!

This is an exceptionally moving story – unsentimental and poignantly narrated.

«Mother and daughter Hjorth's story about having cancer is in every way heartbreakingly good.»DAGBLADET, 6/6 stars

«Mother and daughter Hjorth are not the first to write their way through an encounter with cancer, but the complexity of being both patient and next of kin at the same time gives their story a dimension of its own. And in times like these, it certainly doesn't hurt that readers get a well-written and deeply engaging insight into what a social masterpiece the Nordic health systems are.»STAVANGER AFTENBLAD, 5/6 stars

«What mother and daughter Hjorth offer is in fact a language for cancer beyond the metaphors of war and self-help. Even though a serious diagnosis disrupts life, it continues, albeit in a changed form. Isn't that what reconstruction is all about, whether it concerns a sequence of events or a breast? The body is sown in transience. Literature offers to add, to put together, to find words and to give new form to these experiences of disruption until we are no longer.»MORGENBLADET

«For a book about cancer, Like It or Lump It is astonishingly funny and witty. [... it] becomes so much more than a cancer book because both authors dare to poke at emotional wounds.»AFTENPOSTEN

«Almost everyone will come into contact with cancer during their lifetime, either as a patient or as next of kin. Chances are that both body and mind will react differently than you imagined when it happens.Then radically open writing like this could be vital reading.»VG

«Vigdis Hjorth and Line Norman Hjorth create a community with this book about their own experiences with cancer. ... therapeutic reading.»KLASSEKAMPEN

«... a different, really brave, open and very educational book – for all of us, regardless of where in life we find ourselves.»NETTAVISEN