Reviews

• “The master of relationships, Moa Herngren, is finally back with a novel about the delicate nature of relations and how the people we know best sometimes can feel like total strangers.”

• “Sure thing, she does it again! Moa Herngren is masterly and utterly phenomenal at depicting relationships and conflicts that move, engage and create recognition. (…) The various perspectives and family roles are portrayed so skillfully. Hats off, I take a bow for yet another fantastic reader’s experience that I will not soon forget. /…/ The well-formulated language flows smoothly and the carefully constructed and well-thought-out sentences at times become like poetry and is a pure delight to read. I’m impressed by the planted details and savour certain comments that are so very spot on! (…) [Moa Herngren] has her very own tone and achieves to create a captivating and immersive plot that is impossible to shy away from. The, at first glance, given behaviours manages to repeatedly surprise me with unexpected turns. /…/ The novel awakens plenty of thoughts and reflections, which makes it an excellent bookclub-title.”

• “[Moa Herngren is] a true master at constructing these tense atmospheres and conflicts, the lack of communication. /…/  The tone is so pitch perfect it gets me thinking ‘what has Moa Herngren herself been through to be able to write this credibly about being set aside and feeling misunderstood and left out?’”

• “The supreme relationship novel of relationship novels. /…/ A family secret comes to light here in a very clever way I must say. /…/ The relatability factor is there throughout. I truly enjoy Herngren’s set-up. (…) I find myself laughing out loud, then the laughter gets stuck in your throat, then I cry, then I smirk again.”

• “Just like in her previous novels in the family therapy-genre (…) Moa Herngren describes everyday situations and relationships in her latest novel The Inheritance with an albeit dramatically elevated but also eerily spot on perceptivity. /…/ The second-hand embarrassment is real for me on numerous occasions here – reading Herngren is a little bit akin to picking at a scab. She is painfully skilled at pinpointing our sources of disagreements in our relationships with those we love the most.”

• “What is so brilliant about Moa Herngren is the way she first outlines one perspective, leaving you to think that this sibling seems reasonable and the others out of their minds. Then one gets to follow the second one and think ‘aha, this – this is how it really was – the others just haven’t really gotten it’ – this is how it actually went down, you get the picture. /…/ The sympathies are shifted between these people, it’s ingenious I must say. This is simply a truly great relationship novel.”

• “Relationships is the sport where Herngren excels and yet again, amongst the emotional turmoil [in The Inheritance], she steers the tale assuredly and skilfully over the finish line.”

• “If someone’s to write about sibling problematics it surely ought to be Moa Herngren, who in the last couple of years have written two impressive novels about complicated family relationships, The Mother-in-Law and The Divorce. In both novels she has achieved to shine a light on the different sides in a conflict, so well that one truly comes to understand the different perspectives. This, she also accomplishes in The Inheritance, which is sprinkled with skilfully selected family details when the siblings in question begin to clear out their dad’s left behind belongings. /…/ Moa Herngren has got a knack for highlighting an array of less flattering characteristics in us all, but also for explaining them so well that it feels like reading an unusually talented family therapist.”

• “The Inheritance makes me forget to both eat and sleep. /…/ Skilfully told from different perspectives, where everyone owns their truth and their experience.”

• “[Herngren] picks up on those themes that we all can relate to, in one way or another. /…/ When I open a book by Moa Herngren nowadays I always expect to be given a reader’s experience of high quality. The Inheritance is no exception. The novel moves its readers when we encounter three siblings that all have the same parents, but haven’t had the same childhood that being said.”

• “Yet again Moa Herngren has written a relationship novel that moves you and that many likely can relate to. In The Inheritance she excels with a razor sharp and very skilfully told narrative about family relations and how vulnerable one can feel in one’s own family. /…/ [E]ven with expectations set sky high this turned out to be a reader’s experience that delivered extra everything. Moa Herngren is the queen of family dramas. (…) The Inheritance takes a given place among the best novels of the year! Outstanding is the only thing I can say, Moa Herngren!”

• “Moa Herngren offers up a thrilling drama with an absolute pitch for messy relationships. The siblings are given the word one by one and nothing appears to be as it seems. First your sympathies lie with Andrea, then with Ullis and then with Rasmus. The truth seems hard to pin down, shifts shape and lies in the eye of the beholder!”

• “In some ways there’s a constantly ongoing power battle in [The Inheritance] that I believe many siblings will be able to see themselves in.”

• “[Herngren] is just so great. Incredible language. (…) A brilliant set-up for a novel. /…/ It’s so clever, so intelligently written. So many layers, just like there is in real families – that’s what’s so darn nice, there’s so much recognition. /…/ Thrilling and high relatability.”

• “Moa Herngren is the master of depicting relationships.”

• “In her new novel The Inheritance, Moa Herngren explores the painful conflicts that can arise between siblings in the wake of a parents’ death. By depicting different perspectives, both from the view of the person organizing it all and from the person receiving all the reminders, Herngren shines a light on the complex dynamic there.”