The narrator of this novel is a Norwegian writer living in Milan. A year has passed since the premature death of her Italian husband. She falls in love. M is seventeen years younger than her, but the connection between them is intense and of a kind she has never felt before. Then, as his vulnerability starts showing, so does his troubling rage. She knows this rage. It was always present in her childhood, and it created an all-encompassing fear in her.

 

In Stay with Me, Hanne Ørstavik returns to her theme of love, this time exploring how it can be intertwined with insecurity, fear and violence. How do you recognise love, if fear is the feeling you know?