Literature and Fiction2024 · 224 pp
You Can’t Fool Me
Marie Kinge
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.
«Marie Kinge's debut novel has both sharp edges and a big, beating heart.»KLASSEKAMPEN
«The novel is a coming-of-age story, where mood swings and life sparks are mixed with humour, comedy and originality. Although the literary observations are charged with the somber event, the novel is about life rather than death. Instead of examining with it is to lose, it asks what it means to have.»MORGENBLADET
«Solid and unique among the many books about broken families and grief. [...] shows a solid ability to create moods and fill simple formulations with fatality. And it has a zing, which I like.»NRK
«Marie Kinge's debut proves that also the difficult childhoods can contain love, humour and warmth.»UNIVERSITAS
A terrible and terrific debut«... hits you like a fist.»AFTENPOSTEN
