The latest addition to my website is Ingvar Ambjørnsen‘s Brødre i blodet (UK: Beyond the Great Indoors; US: Elling). The book tells the story of two men- Elling and Kjell Barne – who have been in an institution, Elling, who lived alone with his mother and never went out and was unable to cope after her death and Kjell who hated his parents. They are now out in the world, sharing a flat and struggling to cope with the real world. While Ambjørnsen is certainly both sympathetic to and positive about the pair, he is not averse to gently mocking them, making the book both very funny as well as at times sad though never mawkish. However, unlike a lot of novels about mental health, this one is positive as the two struggle to join the world, with a little bit of help from their friends. This is the sixth novel Ambjørnsen has written about Elling and the only one translated into English and we learn more about his earlier and later life in the other books but this one very much stands on its own.