La casa del mirador ciego

Synopsis of La casa del mirador ciego

The House with the Blind Glass Veranda, published in 1981, is the first novel by Herbjørg Wassmo, recognized as one of the best storytellers in the Nordic countries. The book received the Critics' Prize and is the beginning of the Tora trilogy, which has also received the Nordic Council Literature Prize. This novel narrates, with the simplicity characteristic of the best Nordic literature, the life of Tora, a girl born from the relationship of a Norwegian woman and a German soldier during the occupation. Her childhood takes place in a small town in Norway, in the house that gives the book its title, where she will suffer, on the one hand, the absence of a mother with too many occupations and, on the other, the abuses of her stepfather. Despite all this hostility, Tora has the illusions of a girl her age, and thanks to the affection and strength of her aunt Rakel she will grow up. Beyond narrating Tora's childhood and adolescence, Wassmo presents us, from the perspective of a woman, with a universal question: the fear, shame and guilt felt by the victim of a situation of abuse. It is a story that inevitably reaches our hearts, makes us feel complicit with this girl and we are expectant to know what her life will be like.