Vigdis Hjorth's "Repetition"

Kate Wolf speaks to Vigdis Hjorth about her latest novel, Repetition. In the book, the narrator, a novelist in her 60s, returns with an almost trancelike intensity to an episode from her youth in which she had her first sexual experience. Leading up to her encounter with the young man she loses her virginity to, she is subjected to extreme scrutiny by her mother, who questions her daughter's every move, tracking her whereabouts, and later, even reading her diary. As the narrator unfolds the events of her past further, the true reasons for her mother's attention comes to light, and the power of retelling and rexaming stories we think we know becomes even more clear. A novel about the power of memory, as well as writing, empathy, and imagination, Repetition enacts the kind of reckoning with our past selves that we might have should we be brave enough to return to them.