[gmw]

Freja had insisted on calling her mother ‘Clementine’ since she was three years old and discovered a fruit by the same name. Both fruit and mother were deliciously sweet and zesty. ‘Mummy’ suddenly seemed a dull and inadequate word.

‘Good heavens!’ cried Tobias, throwing his hands in the air. His face was filled with horror. ‘Of course you’re not normal! What a ghastly thing to contemplate.’

-- Katrina Nannestad, The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Rome, (2017)