Emily Forever

Press Quotes

Praise for Emily Forever

“Emily is nineteen years old, works at the supermarket, and is pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out ‘to sort something out’ 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 Næringsliv

“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

“In a novel distinguished by intelligence and nuanced prose, Maria Navarro Skaranger follows her confused main character into a new life phase. Her body of work exudes a peculiar, beautiful energy.”
Klassekampen

“There are many reasons why Emily Forever is a fantastic book. To me, the narrative voice is the most important; it is through this that Maria Navarro Skaranger approaches her main character, a poor 19-year-old girl who is about to become a single mother, with a peculiar mix of closeness and distance—and also wonder, tenderness, and subtle humor.”
Ulla Svalheim, Vårt Land, Best Books of 2021

“I have read many novels about class, class journeys, and social inequality over the past year. Many of them have been good, but none have woven together the structural and the individual, the political and the existential, as elegantly as Maria Navarro Skaranger does in Emily Forever. A gorgeous book!”
Ingeborg Misje Bergem, Vårt Land, Best Books of 2021

“This might very well be how the world is for ‘the girl at the check-out counter at the supermarket,’ who parents use to scare their children with when they refuse to do their homework. Skaranger portrays such a woman for better or worse. She hopes with her, struggles with her, breathes with her. It is deeply moving.”
Marianne Lystrup, Vårt Land, Best Books of 2021

“Maria Navarro Skaranger’s books are full of beautiful, fallible people, portrayed with honesty and love. Emily—nineteen and about to become a mother—is no exception. The Oslo writer’s effortless, vivid prose suits this book about growing up faster than you might want to.”
Elias Bakken Johansen, Vårt Land, Best Books of 2021

“A powerful, sharply written novel about finding value in the life you have.”
Adresseavisen

“Skaranger’s third novel hits the mark. Emily Forever is a novel about a young soul in a terrifying situation, written with integrity and a distinctive approach. Skaranger draws up young characters in the beautiful/ugly landscapes of East Oslo with an impressive lightness and authenticity.”
NRK

“Again, it’s Skaranger’s distinctive literary sense that makes this book shine. The author portrays pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period with her very own vitality, irony, and poetry. Her alertness to the material details of class differences is perhaps at its highest in Emily Forever and is accompanied by a finely tuned depiction of caregiving. With literary authority Maria Navarro Skaranger has succeeded in writing a tight, short novel rich in themes and motives. In this way she assumes her place among the greats with confidence and a great naturalness.”
Margunn Vikingstad, Morgenbladet

“Emily Forever makes room for a person who isn’t usually enclosed by language and literature. What makes it so magnificent is that Maria Navarro Skaranger refrains from turning Emily into a representative for this or that. When I read the novel for the third time, I realized that I had to let go, but also that the ice-cold times we live in produce a desire for living literature. Emily. Look at her and think for yourself.”
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden

“What makes Emily Forever into something absolutely out of the ordinary is the way that the omniscient narrator wanders in and out of the characters, rendering their thoughts and experiences unwaveringly solid and doubtful at the same time. It actually feels like Navarro Skaranger has invented a new and irresistible way of portraying people.”
Aftonbladet, Sweden

“Skaranger shows the control she has over her craft. With apparent simplicity she gets under the skin of the novel’s characters, at the same time precisely pointing out how poverty isn’t just about material things. There are glimpses of brutal humor but the tone is serious and between the lines you sense a tender, trembling indignation, which also spreads to the reader, coalescing into a knot in the stomach.”
Svenska Dagbladet

“Skaranger writes about pregnancy, motherhood, and often unheard people’s inner lives in a way that feels unique and pioneering. Everybody wants to tell stories about class these days, but it’s rarely done in such an unpretentious way. The perspective shifts from one character to the other, always seamlessly. I don’t understand how Navarro Skaranger does it, how the author herself can reach into Em’s existence and speak directly to the reader, but she does, and it’s completely natural and very elegant. A moving, laconic little novel which seems to say more than the words it contains.”
Borås Tidning