Description

When the vibrations from a lorry on its way to a new data centre brings down the roof of a community centre in Norway, the lives of three members of a small-town marching band collide in this keenly observed, sharply funny novel by the bestselling author of A Modern Family.

When a lorry carrying an excavator to Google’s new data centre rumbles through a small Norwegian town, the vibrations bring down the roof of the old community centre, where the local marching band had gathered. Inside are a father fighting to keep his sons, a band conductor watching the work that has defined her life slip away, and a woman beginning to feel invisible.

Anton is in anger-management therapy because it may be his only chance of sharing custody of his twin boys. Ebba, a feminist and conductor of the independent marching band, is trying to keep her family together as her grown daughters continue to need more than she can give. Birgitte’s children have left home, her body is changing, and her husband’s enthusiasm has become suffocating. Then she meets Anton.

Through rehearsals, volunteer work and family dinners, their private struggles surface in the small negotiations of everyday life: what we ask of one another, what we give, and what we keep back. Outside, the world is coming apart. At home, there is always something that needs doing.

Darkly funny and unsparing, Nowhere Fast lays bare the quiet power struggles of family life: who decides, who gives way, and when care begins to feel like a debt. The roof falls in a moment; the pressures on these lives have been building for years.