They by Helle Helle

Following a number of moves from one shabby rental to another, They--the mother and daughter of this elusive, strangely riveting novel set in 1980s Denmark--now reside in an apartment over the hairdresser shop in the same island town where they've always lived. It's only ever been the two of them, and they are so enmeshed that it can be hard to tell them apart: they share the same manners, habits, and opinions to an almost comic degree. One day the mother feels a lump in her throat, and, as our young heroine reflects, "nothing's the way it is." While the mother is in and out of the hospital, the daughter--barely sixteen and just starting high school--makes new friends and meets a few boys, but she remains essentially alone. In its splintering, multi-layered, perpetual present tense, where the borders of time seemingly expand, flatten, and dissolve, Helle finds an unexpectedly moving voice for her heroines' pain, one which rises almost wordlessly to the surface of the prose, to then rea