Don't Stay Gone

A novel about love and being the outsider, powerlessness, and personal responsibility.

The morning is passing as usual in one of London’s finer neighbourhoods, even if yet another autumn storm is rolling in above the city. Vibeke and Torbjørn are getting ready to go to work, and Ella and Leo are on their way to school. The idea was to make a fresh start, especially for their daughter Ella, who was getting bullied back home in Norway. Torbjørn works at the embassy, where a controversial artist is attending a dinner that same evening. Vibeke is a psychologist and researcher into personality disorders, and goes along to the exhibition at lunchtime to see what the controversy is all about.

Then the school calls. Ella didn’t show up. Nobody knows where she has gone. We follow Vibeke’s desperate search for her daughter through a capital city marked by Brexit, the fear of terrorism, and extreme weather. Along the way, questions begin to emerge: Where did it go wrong? How do you let go without losing grip?

In Benedicte Meyer Kroneberg’s new novel, the characters move through the shadows cast by high-level politics to find a way back to each other. Don’t Stay Gone is a novel about love and being the outsider, powerlessness and personal responsibility.