The fractured relationship between a mother and daughter is laid bare in Hanna Stoltenberg’s award-winning debut work.

This relationship is seen entirely from the perspective of the mother Karin, a restless creature who seems more of a spectator in life than an active participant. She picks up strangers in bars; has a series of casual relationships via dating apps and doesn’t much care for her job in a jewellery shop.

The days have a regularity she enjoys. She rarely listens to music; she usually reads novels and online newspapers or chats with men from the dating website and fixes dates she either keeps or cancels, depending on how she feels on the day. Sometimes she sees friends, old colleagues, goes to the cinema or has dinner. She has no problem finding things to talk about and is a good listener, but afterwards she often feels distorted by her own words and wishes she had stayed at home. It doesn’t bother her to be alone. As long as your basic needs are covered — food, shelter, the possibility of intimacy — how much difference is there really between a good and a bad life? 

With her daughter Helene, she is equally remote. Helene only calls her when she needs something — babysitting favours, presents or end of school year events. If Karin calls her, their conversations are invariably stilted as if Helen has far more important things to be doing than talking to her mum.

Karin would love to have a good relationship with the girl she says, though instantly adds that she doesn’t know what that means. She gets an opportunity to find answers when Helene invites her mum for a weekend trip to London to get away from the stress of a marriage on the rocks. .

That trip brings to a head everything that is wrong with their relationship, and as the narrative shifts between past and present, all their vulnerabilities are revealed.

Near Distance is a wonderfully observant novel, rich in scenes charged with simmering tensions that threaten to bubble over with one misplaced comment. Even simple experiences like an afternoon with a personal shopper or an evening with Helene’s friends are oddly unsettling. Much is hinted at but never articulated. You sense these women have buried their emotions so deep and for so long, that once the dam is breached, and they open up there will be no turning back.

Stoltenberg resists the opportunity to wave a magic wand and give these women a reconciliation. This absence of a resolution feels very real and authentic. A schism of this magnitude and duration just doesn’t get fixed in one weekend but there are hints that, at least for Karin, there is the start of a new beginning.