Despair of Self: Strategies of Seeing and Becoming in Linn Ullmann’s De urolige

Abstract

In 2015, Linn Ullmann published her autobiographical novel De urolige (2015; Unquiet [2019]). The novel deals with the relationship between parents and children. The main characters are simply referred to as the mother, the father, and the girl. Although they appear nameless, Ullmann’s parents are easily identifiable as the Swedish director, author, and producer Ingmar Bergman, and the Norwegian actress, author, and director Liv Ullmann. The novel alternates between a third-person perspective and a first-person narrative written from the girl’s point of view as she grows into adulthood. The mother, the father, and the girl do not constitute a family in the ordinary sense: “Jeg var hans barn og hennes barn, men ikke deres barn, det var aldri oss tre” (Ullmann 2015, 10) [“I was his child and her child, but not their child, it was never us three” (Ullmann 2019, 4)]. The girl suffers from the way things are: “Egentlig tror jeg at jeg har sørget over foreldrene mine hele livet” (2015, 74) [“To be honest, I think I have mourned my parents all my life” (2019, 68)]. In focusing on the relationship between parents and children, De urolige resembles other autobiographical novels recently published in Norway: Knausgård (2009), Wassmo (2013), Hjorth (2016), to mention only a few. But unlike the parents depicted in these novels,