The Same and Something Completely Different

Do you know how it feels to doubt your own family? The feeling that your sister is a little closer to your mother than you are? That they talk about you behind your back? How it feels to be in a family you can’t trust? What happens when you say no to a family party? And why does your aunt interfere?

After writing several young men’s coming-of-age stories (En uskyldig familie [An innocent family], Et rigtigt live [A real life]), Katrine Marie Guldager wanted to write her own—in novel-form.

The same and something completely different is about becoming. The novel follows a young woman who loses first a friend and shortly thereafter her father. It deals with inherited conflict and the fragile web of the family. It’s also about breaking away and becoming a stranger in your own family.

About the author 

Katrine Marie Guldager (b. 1966) has written short stories, novels, children’s books, poems, an autobiography, and the six-book series The Køge-Chronicle. In 2017 Guldager published the critically acclaimed bestseller En uskyldig familie [An innocent family] in 2017. She’s received numerous grants and prizes, including the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant.

Text translated by Sharon Rhodes