What My Body Remembers

by Agnete Friis, Lindy Falk Van Rooyen (Translation)

From New York Times bestselling author Agnete Friis comes the chilling story of a young mother who will do whatever it takes to protect her son.

Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since she was seven years old, the night her father murdered her mother. She doesn't remember anything about that night or her childhood before it but her body remembers. The PTSD-induced panic attacks she now suffers incapacitate her for hours sometimes days at a time and leave her physically and psychically drained.

After one particularly bad episode lands Ella in a psych ward, she discovers her son, Alex, has been taken from her by the state and placed with a foster family. Driven by desperation, Ella kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town in northern Denmark where she was born. Her grandmother's abandoned house is in grave disrepair, but she can live there for free until she can figure out how to convince social services that despite everything, she is the best parent for her child.

But being back in the small town forces Ella to confront the demons of her childhood the monsters her memory has tried so hard to obscure. What really happened that night her mother died? Was her grandmother right was Ella's father unjustly convicted? What other secrets were her parents hiding from each other? If Ella can start to remember, maybe her scars will begin to heal or maybe the truth will put her in even greater danger.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Suspense, Nordic Noir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Broken lives, broken people. Ella has been under state care since the age of seven when her father killed her mother. She was there, but remembers nothing of that time, and little from the time before. Her body though, does remember and she has severe PTSD, panic attacks that are crippling. She has a son now, a son she loves but is unable to handle a job, so, she receives money from the social services available. She drinks too much and is under the supervision of a social worker. When a severe attack hospitalizes her, the social services take her son, a son she recovers and then runs back to the town she is from. There she hopes to gain control of her life, she also begins to remember, pieces here and there.

There was something about the atmosphere in this novel that I found captivating. Melancholy and almost haunting, this story is well written and well plotted. Although it is easy to dislike Ella and the things she does, I found myself rooting for her and her son, Alex. Suspenseful without being horribly graphic, was quite caught up in the story and once again did not guess the outcome.

ARC from Netgalley.

[Lynsey Summers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening to this book was a little different to what I was expecting.  Usually you are given an explosive event or shocking revelation, but this opens with a very simple and frank conversation between two neighbours.  Two females.  It is muted, matter of fact and so completely puts you straight into the tone of the book it is very clever.

So, what is the tone of the book?  Well, to be honest, it is pretty bleak.  Written in first person narrative by protagonist Ella, the reader quickly ascertains that Ella and her son Alex live a pretty poor life, both financially and in quality.  Both Ella and Alex suffer from mental health issues, something Ella fights the state about with vengeance.  Ella's general outlook on life and other people is negative, she trusts in very little, but that is hardly surprising given the traumatic and fragmented up bringing she has endured.  When she moves back to where she grew up, she meets people from her past who seem to know more about her than she does; Thomas, her old school friend who obviously hasn't lost the flame he held for her, Baek-Nielson her grandmothers friend, Barbara who swears she will help her no matter how much she protests.  The author presents them well, I was not sure who could be trusted...

Throughout we are taken on Ella's, reluctant, journey of discovery about what really happened in her childhood, particularly the night her mother died.  What I liked was there was no sudden changes in Ella's attitude, she didn't suddenly become an optimistic fighter, or into money.  She is forced to deal with her own past so that it doesn't affect her son's future, but even so, she does it all seriously dragging her feet and with limited means.

In between the current day scenes with Ella, we are taken back to 1994, the year her father allegedly killed her mother.  Told from the viewpoint of both her father, Helgi, and mother, Anna, the reader learns the couple both had secrets and issues over the course of that year.  Using the three viewpoints the plot comes together well and at a steady pace.  Although I did put two and two together, it did not spoil the book for me and I enjoyed the way the author weaved and pulled all the ends together. 

I loved the characters, they were very real and most importantly relevant to the plot.  At first, I did wonder whether some of the language used was a little too much, but actually considering it now, as I review the novel in it's entirety, no it wasn't.  The book is set to the theme of hardship and with that comes gritty realities that sometimes only profanity can truly help describe.  Although some of the characters and language may seem harsh, the overall emotion I got from them was actually compassion, I particularly thought this of Rosa.

What My Body Remembers, for me, was a different kettle of fish to what I was expecting.  It is written through emotion rather than action.  It's themes ran strong and true from beginning right to end and the characters are really well developed and interesting.

[Abby • Crime by the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Find my full review on Crime by the Book: http://crimebythebook.com/blog/2017/4...

This is book totally defied my expectations for it - but I wholly enjoyed it. It's nothing like your standard Nordic Noir: it doesn't have a police investigation at the center of it, and it's hardly a violent story. Instead, it's a slow-burning, atmospheric exploration of a young woman's past - and how she is still defined by the traumas from her youth. It's tense, emotional, and a truly unique little book!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting novel. Not a scandinavian noir, this book solves a crime of long ago and showes the consequences of it on one of the victims. I knew about halfway who did it, but the why and how kept me interested till the end. The consequences this crime had on one of the victims, made this novel also gripping and sad. Above all it raised my awareness that poverty and a sad life can happen to all of us if we are dealt a wrong card.

[Skip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ella Nygaard lives with her son, but cannot work because of her medical condition. She is estranged from her family as her father went to prison for the killing of her mother. Following a minor altercation, Ella grabs her son from a relation and heads out of the city to her grandmother's abandoned home on the coast, where they try to establish new lives. The book goes back and forth between the present and the events leading up to her mother's death until we understand what actually occurred. I like the series about Nina Borg that Friis co-writes with Lene Kaaberbol, but found this solo effort rather flat.

[Chandra Claypool (WhereTheReaderGrows) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The night her father kills her mother, Ella is only seven years old and becomes part of the system. She acts out and becomes unexpectedly pregnant at a young age. Her post traumatic amnesia leads to severe panic attacks, leaving her in question with the state regarding her ability to take care of not only herself, but her son as well. When it becomes apparent that the state wants to take her son away, she takes matters into her own hands and runs away with him. Heading back to her grandmother's abandoned house, she's forced to confront the past she can't remember.

This book is shown mostly through Ella's eyes with flashbacks through her parents (father, Helgi and mother, Anna) leading up to Anna's death. The author builds the story in an atmospherically beautiful and poignant way. We see the human struggle in all three characters - the marriage that falls apart, psychological damages that incur, a child's memory confused by her own immature mind. An absolutely gorgeous read. I guessed correctly at the ending and what was coming as it was happening, but it didn't take away from me loving the book any less. If you're looking for something fast paced and a twist that punches you in the face, this probably isn't quite the read you're looking for. However, if you're looking for a beautiful, atmospheric thriller that hits your emotional center, this is it. While the ending is not surprising, the author builds the entire story in a way that leaves you satisfied. Be warned that this story is bleak with an extremely flawed and unlikeable lead character. In fact, none of the characters are likeable - but they are real and raw and that's something I can absolutely appreciate in a well written book.

[Bridget · Rating 1 out of 5]

I so wanted to love this book, The Boy in the Suitcase is a book I loved to bits, I liked it because it was a different kind of mystery, one where I was guessing all the time, where I really liked the characters and where I really connected with the story. With this one though, I've just become really tired of it, I feel like I'm reading a puzzle with a bunch of missing pieces, but with so many missing pieces I can't even get the edges done, let alone fill in the middle bits. At times the pace is great and the story races along but at others, I feel like I'm reading a scene I've already read.

The book was quite difficult to read because the formatting hadn't been completed in any way, lots of running words together, odd pagination and it was a long way from fully formed, but that doesn't usually worry me, this time because of the slow pace I found that it really did make it hard to read.

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me access to this, I'm sorry I didn't love it more.

[William Koon · Rating 1 out of 5]

What My Body Remembers stands out by having one of the most unattractive main characters I have ever come across in fiction. Of course, there was Donleavy’s Sebastian Dangerfield, but he was down right loveable compared to Ella the heroine of this Danish pot boiler. She is foul mouthed, sexually promiscuous, a junkie, an alcoholic, a free loader on society and just plain nasty. Some of the more memorable scenes are of her throwing up. Scenes.

The plot revolves around the murder of her mother told in clunky flashbacks, which match the clunky translation. It’s that old plot device of I’ve got to know, counterpointed with “I am really too drunk, stoned to know or care.”

But HARK! There’s plot twist. Instead of the “I have a letter!” There’s an “I received a text.” Yes, Danes are as stupid about phones as the rest of the world, even in Jutland.

After too many pages we realize the enemy is already in the house and Holy Lutefisk! I have recovered my eight year old’s memory. Then we are insulted by the final chapter of happily ever after with Daddy, whom we have hated needlessly all of these years in a paradise of Thailand and guess what? Testicular cancer boyfriend will be joining us. Below contempt. How do these things get published. Friis was co-author of The Boy in the Suitcase, which I remember liking. If you are stuck with this book on a desert isle, dig a hole, bury it, and stare at the sand. Much more satisfying.

[Jodie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent story but I think the fact that it was translated from Danish to English made it odd in some parts but all in all I did like it. There was a good twist at the end that I didn't see coming.

[Shirley Cagle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that this book is different, in that the protagonist is not particularly likeable or easy to understand. The bleak situation and setting mirror her mental state and her inner turmoil is completely understandable once you know the circumstances of her childhood. The story has some interesting plot twists and tension builds more quickly in the second half of the novel. Very well-crafted!

[Courtenay Giles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Predicted what was gonna happen after a couple chapters but still nice to be reading psychological fiction again

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite shocked by the ending. I did not see it coming at all.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ella Nygaard is 27 years old and has spent virtually all of her life as a ward of the state. When she was 7 years old, her father murdered her mother. Though Ella doesn't remember that night or anything about her life preceding the murder, she now suffers horrendous panic attacks that can last for days, has dissociative disorder and a horrible case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The most meaningful aspect of Ella's life is her son Alex, about ten years old.

Ella was not always a compliant foster child. She is filled with rage and acts out oppositionally at every chance she gets. This creates a case of musical chairs where Ella goes from one home to the next, never truly connecting with any of the foster parents. The only person Ella feels a sense of closeness with is Kirstin, her social worker, as well as two neighbors in her low income housing building.

As the novel opens, Alex is in foster care and Ella is distraught. "A life without Alex would be a life without me. He was the only one who saw me, and needed me." Ella decides to take Alex away from his foster family and gets her two friends to help with the kidnapping. Once she has Alex with her they head to Northern Denmark, to her paternal grandmother's home. Though it is dilapidated and falling down, it is still a home. It is there that Ella begins to explore her past, acknowledge that she had a childhood and lets memories slowly seep into her consciousness.

This book is a scathing diatribe of a social system that works against a traumatized child rather than with her. She is punished for her symptoms and rewarded if she represses them. Ella is a very troubled woman but, with the right care and opportunities, she would be able to work out the secrets of her past that hold her back as an adult. As a clinical social worker myself, I can't help but think of how EMDR, Brainspotting, and other techniques could be of help to Ella. Processing her trauma in a trusting rather than punishing environment would be the most helpful way for Ella's secrets to reveal themselves.

This novel by Agnette Friis is fluidly translated from the Danish by Lindy Falk Van Rooyen. It reads very smoothly without any awkwardness.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to SoHo Crime publishers and Edelweiss-AboveTheTreeline for What My Body Remembers by Agnete Friis. I received an ARC Kindle e-book edition at no cost.

There are people in our world who have never experienced nightmares that come to life.

Post-Traumatic Stress has become a buzz-phrase in society, that makes it seem a fad rather than a disease or ailment. Only recently people outside of War experience were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disease.

Unlike a broken bone or paralysis, PTSD is a psychological manifestation of tragic or traumatic experiences. The effects are felt by a sufferer in different ways.

There is little acknowledgment or treatment for deep trauma. Many sufferers end up self-medicating with alcohol and/or drugs.

It is easy to judge others when we cannot see the deep poisonous pains that handicap their lives.

This novel is about a remarkable woman; Ella Nygaard of Denmark. For twenty years she has done the best she can to keep some kind of life balance and provide a life for her adolescent son.

The only family she knows or claims is her son. Every day is a struggle to keep enough balance to keep her son and a way to provide for them.

At the age of seven Ella experienced a grisly nightmare which claimed the life of her mother. Her father went to prison. She cannot remember any of it.

Ella experiences physical ailments called tremors when she dreams. Some of the memories start to come through and her body cannot take it. But science will not brand what she experiences as a disability. Their lives remain cataclysmic.

Her only friends are also broken. Sober alcoholics who care about Ella and her son Alex.

A series of events takes Ella back to the physical place where the nightmare began.

Will this be the end of it all? Will Ella and Alex be able to stay together?

Can there be any possible redemption or resolution?

I will recommend this haunting novel for our library collection, and to other readers I know.

[maria helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not quite sure what to expect from this novel about single mother Ella who struggles with keeping the custody of her young son Alex, while also dealing with traumatic events from her own childhood.

The main character Ella is extremely complex. She is fascinating while also annoying and frustrating, but most importantly a very real and honest character. The story slowly unfolds, revealing more and more details about Ella's childhood and the night her father killed her mother. I love the bleak tone which highlights the desperation and the emotional turmoil Ella goes through. (Also, the ending. I did not see that coming.)

Ella, while fascinating, is a difficult character to connect to and the pace is occasionally a bit too slow but overall, this book was a pleasant surprise.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do I never learn... audiobooks with Danish or Scandi names in general tend to have pretty butchered name pronunciations. And it gets on my nerves, in every single book where it happens. Which fortunately isn’t all of them, but still. Nygaard was butchered to sound “Nugar” (as it would be written back in e.g. Swedish based on the sound). Nugar?! Äna (or it’d be Æna since Danish ä), Helgi...
The story line was interesting and fresh, making you want to find out what happened and how it all binds together. The protagonist, telling the current storyline in first person, has a lot of unlikeable characteristics, yet manages to tell the story with enough coherence.

[Ru Chica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's hear it for the unlikable female protagonist! Ella's mother was killed by her father when she was a child, and that unremembered event has colored her life for that point forward. She drinks too much, smokes too much, fucks too much, she is too much. She's a mother on welfare struggling to take care of her son, Alex, and they collect cans to help make ends meet. Alex spends time with a foster family with "good intentions" and the foster mother reports Ella to social services trying to gain sole custody of Alex. Ella violently confronts the foster mother, takes Alex, and runs back to the town of her youth to evade repercussions of her actions. As she spends time in her childhood town, she begins to remember her childhood, and what happened that night.

This book is split between Ella in the present, and her mother's story in 1994 that led up to the night of her murder. It was intricately plotted, small clues scattered throughout the present and past stories, to uncover the truth that has affected Ella's every action and decision from childhood into adulthood.

[Ariela · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t really enjoy this book. I don’t know if perhaps the translation did the author a disservice, but I doubt it. The characters felt somehow half-formed and generally weren’t very sympathy-inducing, mostly because they were all so one-dimensional. I felt like the plot twist was totally predictable too, but I guess that’s par for the course with thrillers these days.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Predictable, but okay read. An unlikeable young woman with an eleven year old son who delves into her mother's murder while drinking herself through PTSD seizure type attacks. Not great, but I finished it and had a small surprise in the solving of the murder.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was unpleasant to read and didn't reward the reader with interesting characters or an engaging plot. I understand that had difficult lives that toughened them up, or something, but it was difficult to connect with them when they were so one-dimensional, and that one dimension was aggressively rude.

[Lindsay Masin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Predictable! Has one author written the phrase “turned on their heels” more??!

[Marilyn Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story was disorienting at first, with its switches from present to past and back. The character, Ella, was a little girl at times and at others, a very disturbed young adult. I worried about her being alone and raising a son while dealing with the trauma of her childhood. I despaired of the social services workers understanding her trauma and perhaps offering her some help. The very few friends she had were all very damaged people, also. I found the essential mystery engaging and complex. Well worth my time.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ella Nygaard has suffered from PSTD since childhood when her mother was murdered and her father sent off to prison. At 27, she has a son, Alex, age 11, but they live on government handouts because Ella suffers from sudden and debilitating panic attacks which leave her unable to function for hours at a time. During the latest attack, Ella is hospitalized and upon her release she learns that Alex has been sent to live with foster parents. Desperate, Ella kidnaps Alex and runs to her Grandmother’s seaside ramshackle cottage in sparsely populated North Denmark. Here, Ella will begin to recall the actual events of her mother’s death and discover that danger still lurks for her and her son. A dark, nourish thriller that is certain to satisfy fans of Scandinavian mysteries.

[Anne Slater · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, I will tell you nothing about the plot, per se. You can read that elsewhere.

I don't usually choose books that I am pretty sure are going to be Scandinavian Sour: dark, psychologically heavy, dreary, and sad. And this book is all of those, but.... BUT... it is so engagingly written. The switching back and forth between mother- and daughter-centered narrations (including one or two others along the way) keep the reader really involved, focused on remembering the previous person's reactions, dropping clues along the way. And WHY is grandma so convinced that her grandson, the husband, did not do it?

This book is a delicately plotted weaving of first-hand AND second-hand memories, sensations, reportage. The reader has no doubt how everyone surrounding Ella, the daughter, and Anna, the murdered mother, is thinking and behaving.

At some point you, the reader, know that something is out of whack. You can't quite put your finger on it., You watch Ella move away from alcohol and toward an understanding of how the pieces fit together. And suddenly, before a couple of surreptitious but major clues are dropped, you know what the answer is going to be.

The rest of the book (very little left now) totally makes sense, nothing deus-ex-machina about it. The only fault I found was that there is a sweet great-grandmother as well as a bitchy grandmother (to Ella's 11 year old son). She could have been mentioned in passing earlier to make her existence a little less surprising (I confused her with the bitch for a couple of sentences, then went back to the "Let's go visit your great-grandmother"-- actual line-- and said Aha!)

The heaviness and darkness of Ella's sad childhood are an important part of the book, but the resolution brings relief.

[Cathy Cole · Rating 1 out of 5]

Having read and enjoyed the Nina Borg mysteries Agnete Friis co-wrote with Lene Kaaberbøl, I looked forward to What My Body Remembers with a great deal of anticipation. What I discovered was something else entirely. Normally unlikable main characters don't bother me, but I've been plagued with a rash of them in my reading recently, so by the time I was introduced to Ella Nygaard my patience had already been worn down to a nub.

This one quote sums up Ella's character: "...when anybody tries to talk to you, you just turn your back. Literally. That boy of yours must have been miraculously conceived when you either were too drunk or too high to fend another person off." Ella depends upon social services for money in order to live, but she spends a great deal of time doing nothing but making everything harder for herself and for the agencies trying to help her. If you try to do her a kindness, be prepared to get punched in the nose.

The pace of the book is glacial, and I deduced the villain and an important plot twist well in advance of their reveal. I hate to say it, but reading What My Body Remembers was a chore and the only reason why I finished it was because I wanted to see if my deductions were correct. If a slow pace doesn't bother you-- and if you haven't had a surfeit of unlikable characters in your recent reading, this may very well be your cup of tea. It just wasn't mine.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hesitate to read Nordic Noir. I think of books like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which my son brought with him to read at the cabin one summer. Since there's no electricity and no internet or cell phone service, a good book is pretty necessary, although we spend day time hiking, swimming, kayaking, canoeing...Night times involve games...but also reading (aladdin lamps). I remember Jody laughing and reading me a passage from that book. He was laughing because it was such awful writing. He kept reading though.

I'm, doing the 2018 challenge because it gets me reading outside of my normal genres. And I have to say, I really enjoyed this book. It's well written, has good character development and it creates tension...very dark tension.

The main characters are coarse, hard scrabble people who live on the dole and scrape out a living by collecting cans and bottles to recycle. Ella is raising her eleven year old son alone and he wakes with night terrors. Rosa, her neighbor complains. "If your son were a dog, we would have had the super put him down." Rosa begins to cough and Ella asks if she's been to the doctor. "It's the lungs. I've got to keep taking the pills. "That's not what I meant," Ella replies. I meant that thing you've got stuck up your ass. It's been there for quite a while." Actually, they are good friends...it's just the way they tease each other. The story involves Ella's parents, Anna and Thomas, and a woman named Christi. It involves Anna parents who were Jehovah's Witnesses. The story gets darker and darker.

[Marianne K · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It was so hard not to follow the impulse she had planted in him. The thought of the two of them together, in a white house with big windows and a view over the never-ending meadows. Their double bed was broad and the bedcovers were just as blindingly white as the walls and the furniture, and between them lay a small plump baby. Their child. A son. He had always wanted a son. The image inspired a vision of the future that transformed into a whole new life in which he was twenty years younger--and could start everything over."

Ella is a single mother living on welfare in Denmark incapacitated by tragedy: her father murders her mother and spends years in prison for the crime. Ella is shuttled from one foster home to another, her brash and tough attitude alienating her caregivers. Now a young woman she's been plagued by an inability to remember the night her mother died.

I love books translated from foreign novels actively seeking them out. I thought I'd hit a real winner here. Loved the writing, intriguing storyline, set in Denmark, but that ending, ugh, what was the author thinking.

[Dione Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might have to come back and rewrite this review at some point. If I am totally honest this is a must read that I am still reeling from the effects of. Without giving anything away, the entire book but especially the ending really reflects on healing from childhood trauma by confronting it and seeking out it's source, how often we continually traumatize ourselves by rejecting ourselves just like our abusers did, and how the opening to the healing journey is wrapped up entirely in our bodies and the memories they carry and getting back in touch with them. Really looking into our bodies sensations head on and knowing where they come from (which can be achieved even if you don't ever remember specifics because it's about the beliefs the trauma formed and reenforced). The writing is raw, compelling, reviting and doesn't shy away from the realities of loss, alcoholism, family trauma, lies and panic. These books that run deeply into the human condition are necessary and beautiful. Again, definitely a must read, though be warned cause I as a true crime fan was absolutely absorbed by my own traumas during portions of this book.

[AngryGreyCat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book I noticed on a couple of blogs I follow, so I picked it up from the library. The story is centered on Ella Nygaard, a young woman with severe PTSD and no memory of early childhood as result of her mother’s murder. She has spent her youth in foster care and now has a young son herself. As a result of her symptoms, she is being judged as unable to care for her child and he is being placed in foster care now (repeating the cycle). Ella panics and takes her son back to the place she was from.

This is very different from the usual Nordic Noir police procedural. It is really about Ella rediscovering her past, trying to figure out who she is and in the process protect her son and perhaps move on from the tragic event that has dominated her life. The character of Ella is realistically drawn. She is a fascinating woman with many flaws. but a deep sense of love and a need to protect her son that drives her. This was a captivating read and I finished it in one sitting!

[Phaedra · Rating 3 out of 5]

What My Body Remembers was a twist through PTSD with a supremely unlikeable main character. The thing is, yes, Ella is unlikeable as a young angry woman with issues that has been through the system and is living off the system still , but that seemed realistic. I always wonder about stories where the character has been traumatized in early childhood and through foster care and without much support in the community and yet seems perfectly well adjusted. This seemed like a more likely outcome. Barely functioning, borderline alcoholic, no support except for another alcoholic couple... we follow her down the path of memory back to the main event that has caused the PTSD. I was easily able to make the connections prior to the big reveals and suspected the ending, but the book was moody and darkly atmospheric. Then the ending came.. not sure I buy it but it was a fast read so I'm sticking with the 3 star rating.