Saturday night has just turned into Sunday as Peter approaches the town where he is about to start a new job. In a train travelling in the opposite direction Peter catches sight of his ex-lover Karoline leaving the town. Peter and Karoline are just two of the hundred and eighteen characters that inhabit Trude Marstein’s daringly constructed novel, Doing good.

This is a novel which framework is defined precisely by time and place, but which composition is driven forward by strong sensory and emotional impressions. Shifting elegantly from narrator to narrator, it captures the most diverse characters and environments, all within a small Norwegian town and in the space of one July weekend. A book about passion and death, work and escape, drunkenness and reconciliation, bewilderment and reflection. And ultimately about how, as human beings, in the midst of everything life throws at us, we struggle to do good.