EMILY FOREVER
In this novel about poverty, social inequality, and class contempt in Norway, nineteen-year-old supermarket worker Emily is single, pregnant, and struggling to make ends meet.
Em’s nineteen years old and pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out “to take care of something” and hasn’t returned. Her mother, who raised Emily alone, moves into the little apartment to help. Meanwhile, Em’s neighbour, who may or may not be a clergyman, wonders if it’s normal to be so infatuated with someone you’ve never spoken to. Em’s boss at the supermarket might have feelings for her too, if only she’d notice.
In this novel about poverty, social inequality, and class contempt in Norway, nineteen-year-old supermarket worker Emily is single, pregnant, and struggling to make ends meet.
Em’s nineteen years old and pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out “to take care of something” and hasn’t returned. Her mother, who raised Emily alone, moves into the little apartment to help. Meanwhile, Em’s neighbour, who may or may not be a clergyman, wonders if it’s normal to be so infatuated with someone you’ve never spoken to. Em’s boss at the supermarket might have feelings for her too, if only she’d notice. Emily Forever is a poignant, achingly hard-hitting book about class and about digging deep to find what it takes to get by. At the same time, it’s a deeply original exploration of how a girl like Emily is seen from the outside, by those who think they know who she is and how her life is supposed to pan out. Empathetic and quizzical, and scathingly humorous, Emily Forever is a novel of unyielding solidarity and smoldering social dissent, by a new star of Scandinavian literature.
- World Editions
- Paperback
- June 2024
- 160 Pages
- 9781642861372
Buy the Book
$19.99
About Maria Navarro Skaranger & Martin Aitken
MARIA NAVARRO SKARANGER was born in 1994 in Oslo and made her debut in 2015 with Alle utlendinger har lukka gardiner (All Foreigners Keep Their Curtains Closed). Hailed for its prose–a groundbreaking and highly stylized immigrant-influenced Oslo vernacular–the book was nominated for the Tarjei Vesaas First Book Award and also won the Debut Prize 2015 in Norway. Her acclaimed second novel, Bok om sorg (Book of Grief), was awarded the Oslo Prize and the EU Prize for Literature. Skaranger won the Missing Voice Prize 2022 for her latest novel, Emily Forever, her international breakthrough.
MARTIN AITKEN’s translations of contemporary Scandinavian literature are numerous. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the US National Book Awards, as well as the 2021 International Booker Prize. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019, and most recently the 2022 US National Translation Award for Prose. He lives and works in Denmark.
Praise
“Emily Forever presents its young, pregnant, working-class protagonist through a kaleidoscope. The sharpness of the details describing Emily’s changing life are softly satirical–and her dulled responses leave her something of an enigma. A quietly rebellious novel that sees Emily through the lens of others, the 19-year-old expectant mother refuses to grasp for something to make meaning of her life, stubbornly defying societal expectations.” —Electric Literature
“Emily is nineteen years old, works at the supermarket, and is pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out ‘to take care of something’ and hasn’t returned. Her mother, who raised Emily alone, moves into the little apartment to help. Emily Forever is a properly defiant novel. It refuses to be categorized. Yes, it deals with class and poverty, but it’s just as much about our gaze on the so-called poor and powerless. Maria Navarro Skaranger has written an intelligent, ironic, vital, and poetic novel, which with its many changes of narrative perspective challenges the reader’s expectations and ideas. With its defiant attitude, Skaranger reminds us that the story of the passive, drowsy, and not very future-oriented Emily is very much one worth telling.” —Jury, the Critics’ Prize (Norway)
“Skaranger writes with wisdom and heart about the anybodies of society in this brilliant novel. Skaranger is a glowing literary talent, and part of what makes this novel so rich is its inquiring, critical, observing narrative voice.” —Dagens Nærings
“A profoundly beautiful book about a rudderless existence that seems genetically conditioned. Skaranger’s warm prose and deeply felt sympathy for Emily glows throughout the novel.” —Dagbladet
“In beautiful, intuitive prose, Maria Navarro Skaranger shows how class contempt is expressed in Norway. A fantastic book.” —Vårt Land
Discussion Questions
1. Emily’s character is described as lost, confused, and passive. What did you feel toward Emily? Did she frustrate you? Could you sympathize with her?
2. What would you say the dominating atmosphere of this novel is? Did you find it heartwarming, tragic, hopeless, all of the above? Why?
3. Did you find it to be bleak, even shocking? If so, what purpose do you think this could serve?
4. Do you feel like the novel was trying to effect a change in you? How so, and what kind of change?
5. Has reading Emily Forever made you look differently at people you have encountered in the street?
6. The narrator in the novel is omniscient and the narrative perspective changes frequently. Did this help you get a complete picture of Emily? Or did it keep you at a distance from her? Did you perhaps empathize more with the other characters?
7. Which of the supporting characters do you find most relatable or interesting? Who would you like to know more about?
8. Emily Forever deals with class, social inequality, and poverty in Norway. Did the portrayal of these topics feel specifically Norwegian to you? Or were you rather struck by their universality?
9. Lives like Emily’s are rarely portrayed in language and literature. Have you read books similar to Emily Forever, or did it feel like the first time you were granted access to this underrepresented experience?
10. How would you describe the relationship between Emily and her mother? Were there specific scenes in the book that defined their relationship for you?
11. What do you imagine Emily’s future to look like? Do you worry about her baby? Do you think Emily might be able to turn her life around, and does she need to? Do you see her mother’s and her own fate being repeated in her child and passed on for generations to come?