The latest addition to my website is Cora Sandel‘s Alberte og Jakob (Alberta and Jacob). This is a semi-autobiographical novel, the first in a trilogy, set in a small town, based on Tromsø. Alberta is a young woman who has left school and now has nothing to look forward to but marriage and a family. She clashes with her parents, who have their own problems, has only one friend, an outspoken, carefree young woman, and generally does not fit in or know where she is going. She is only close to her younger brother, Jacob, but he manages to escape, going to sea, and she is left alone. Everything was dead, joyless, sickening, without hope.