‘No, your speech yesterday,’ Mum says. ‘Life begins at forty, wasn’t that it?’

‘You were the one who said that,’ I say.

We give each other something approaching a hug, it feels awkward. I stand on the gravel pathway and wave at the car until it disappears around the corner, then I go back inside, closing the door behind me. It’s silent here now, every room empty, the sun shines in through the windows, falling on the floorboards and rag rug, revealing a layer of dust on the shelf with its row of old shells and framed marine map. Time ticks onwards throughout the cabin and its garden and me, no one summer easily distinguishable from another, which year was it that was so hot, which summer was it that we caught all those mackerel, some will be gone soon, others will arrive.

I move my things out of the tiny bedroom and into the large one. Then I go out onto the decking and look out at the fjord. It’s only me here. I stand there in silence and feel the sun on my face.155156

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TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Ida and Marthe sometimes seem to be trapped in the dynamic that they had as young girls. Do you think that we outgrow our childhood sibling relationships?
2. Which of the book’s characters did you relate to the most?
3. Did this novel change your opinions on what it means to be an adult? Did you find that it called any of your assumptions about adulthood into question?
4. Ida has plenty of opinions on how Marthe and Kristoffer are raising Olea – opinions, however, that she rarely voices. Why do you think that this is?
5. Grown Ups is written exclusively from Ida’s point of view – did being so fully immersed in Ida’s perspective make you more sympathetic to her? Were there any moments where you actively disagreed with her?
6. How do the parenting styles of Mum and Stein compare to Marthe and Kristoffer?
7. How did you view Ida’s relationship with Olea?
8. What do Ida’s feelings about the family cabin, and about how she is becoming side-lined in the ownership of the cabin, say about her status as a ‘grown up’ within her family?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

marie aubert made her debut in 2016 with the short story collection Can I Come Home With You, published to great acclaim in Norway. Grown Ups is her first novel; it won the Young People’s Critics’ Prize, was nominated for the Booksellers’ Prize in Norway and is being published in 15 countries.

rosie hedger was born in Scotland. Her translation of Gine Cornelia Pedersen’s Zero was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2019, and her translation of Agnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal won an English Pen Translates Award in 2016.

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