Trondheim

by Cormac James

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE

A son’s collapse pulls his two mothers together and apart in a novel that probes the limits of love, hope, and forgiveness

In Norway, thousands of miles from home, a student drops dead on the street. A passerby revives his heart, but he remains in a coma from which he may never wake. His mothers rush across the continent to his bedside where they endure the strain of helpless waiting. As the tense hospital vigil continues day after day and they vacillate between extremes of hope, fear, and psychic pain, their troubled relationship is pushed to the edge.

A profound exploration of a family in crisis, Trondheim portrays the way each woman copes with the looming tragedy and the possibility of healing in the wake of a life-altering emergency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954276239
Publisher:	Bellevue Literary Press
Publication date:	02/06/2024
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	247,383
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Cormac James is the author of three novels, including Trondheim and The Surfacing. Born in Cork, Ireland, he lives in Montpellier, France.

Editorial Reviews

01/08/2024

James (The Surfacing) delivers an intelligent character-driven story of a lesbian couple whose lives are upended by news of their 20-year-old son’s heart attack. Lil and Alba are working on a home renovation project in France when they receive a call from a hospital in Norway about their eldest son Pierre, who was studying abroad in Trondheim. They drop everything and travel to be by Pierre’s side, where the stress of the situation strains their already fraught marriage. The stoic and emotionally avoidant Lil, who is Irish, and the doting and expressive Alba, who is Catalonian, have grown to resent each other over the years, and in Trondheim they sleep in separate beds and retreat into new bonds with other women. Alba befriends a woman who’s visiting her father in the hospital; Lil connects with a nurse. The tension between the married women is palpable as Pierre’s coma continues over several days, and their strife is exacerbated when Alba discovers Lil has been talking on the phone with a former lover. The end result is a poignant meditation on grief, perseverance, and the complications of love. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Trondheim

New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection
Kirkus Reviews “Great Books From Irish Writers” selection

“Delicately and deeply probes the mothers and their relationship.” —Katie Kitamura, New York Times Book Review

“James’ elegant novel will leave [readers] shattered and uplifted.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Foster[s] profound reflections upon the characters’ individual and shared lives. . . . Poignant and prescient.” —North of Oxford

“Extraordinary and meticulous. . . . An X-ray picture of the subcutaneous breaks and sprains in a rocky relationship.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Compelling throughout. . . . Trondheim is an exquisite novel that explores maternal love, the price of hope, and how bodies endure.” —Foreword Reviews

“An intelligent character-driven story of a lesbian couple. . . . The end result is a poignant meditation on grief, perseverance, and the complications of love.” —Publishers Weekly

Select Praise for Cormac James and The Surfacing

“Harrowing.” —Oprah.com

“Gratifyingly defies expectations.” —New York Times Book Review

“Highly original and poetic. . . . The writing sparkles with inventiveness.” —John Boyne, Irish Times

“The great topic of Cormac James’ The Surfacing is the reach of human possibility. The prose is calm, vivid, hypnotic, and acutely piercing. James is attuned to the psychological moment. . . . It’s a remarkable achievement, a stylish novel, full of music and quiet control.” —Colum McCann

From the Publisher

★ 2023-10-07
When their son collapses, an unhappy couple travels to his bedside, leaving behind none of their exquisitely described marital baggage.

Together for a quarter century, Alba and Lil are enduring an ordinarily unpleasant day at their home in the south of France—house renovation, subterranean power struggles, overt bickering—when they get a call that their 20-year-old son, Pierre, studying in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, has had a heart attack and died. Resuscitated, he now lies comatose in a hospital. Pierre might wake up fine. He might wake up with brain damage. He might not wake up at all. Lil “had often fantasized that a great life crisis would bring focus and calm. How maddening, now, that Alba seemed determined to make it another version of their petty everyday game.” Maddening indeed, but Alba is hardly the only troublemaker in either the relationship or in Irish writer James’ delicate, incisive third novel. Blunt, horny, and unsentimental, Lil, a former rugby player, handles the stress of Pierre’s catastrophe by acting out: She hits a Trondheim gay bar, initiates a flirtation, hatches a scheme, drinks. Alba, moderate and more conventional, judges and withholds. Again and again, James captures with forensic accuracy the subtle tensions in the marriage. Consider Alba’s purchase of an airport coffee for Lil: “Lil peeled off the lid and peered into the cup. ‘That’s the way she gave it to me,’ Alba said. ‘What did you ask for?' 'If you don’t like it, don’t drink it,’ Alba said. This was the problem they called 'dairy.' It was an alibi, Alba knew, for something far more personal and far less precise.” Pierre’s medical situation is acute and dramatic, but the women’s marital troubles, mundane and chronic, are the real subject of this extraordinary and meticulous little book.

An X-ray picture of the subcutaneous breaks and sprains in a rocky relationship.

Kirkus Reviews