Martin’s story is a harrowing tale of failure and betrayal. About growing up with a violent and unpredictable father. About serious neglect and violence that was never discovered. Reality literature is overflowing with stories of sons’ difficult relationships with domineering fathers. This story is also about a father failing in his duty of care, but most of all about a son’s struggle to get out of his father’s shadow. That said, no parent is a monster, and it is precisely the relationship between good and bad memories that leaves children unsure as to whether they want to repair a relationship—an uncertainty that many fight until it is too late.
Eia-Revheim depicts the relationship with ambivalence, with love and longing as well as disappointment and bitterness. If you experience a little love, you want more, he writes. Who wouldn’t relate to that?
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