Halfway between a sweet classic tale of The Little Match Girl and a heartbreaking glimpse into contemporary life, Stargate is a book capable of striking all the right chords.
How to describe it? How to talk about the power of Christmas magic? How to recount the delicate relationship between sisters? How to explain what it means to be forced to care for someone? How to talk about a burden so heavy that it weighs down the entire heart of childhood? How to convey the importance of a job? The importance of Christmas trees?
Norwegian writer Ingvild Rishøi succeeds perfectly in 160 pages, with a delicate blend of raw reality, a constant contrast that recalls the very colors of Christmas. Without the need for intellectualism or stylistic vanity, the author is an absolute master at bringing to life the most relevant social issues, alongside the simple emotions of everyday life.
Ronja lives with her father and older sister Melissa in Tøyen, on the outskirts of Oslo. Curious, intelligent, and shrewd, she believes that everything can always work out for the best, that her dreams will come true, and that, for starters, her father will finally be able to pay the winter bills. Ten-year-old Ronja and seventeen-year-old Melissa live crushed by the weight of a loving yet unreliable father, both a dreamer and a drunkard.
But everything changes (or seems to change) when the youngest of the family finds her father a job selling fir trees during the Christmas season. The anonymous father begins diligently going to work, being home, and buying the girls breakfast: he no longer goes out with friends to the Porta delle Stelle, the pub his daughters hate so much, and seems happy with the newfound respectability he’s acquired at home. Even the wary Melissa slowly begins to trust her father, regaining some of the small privileges of an adolescence she’s never experienced.
Soon, however, everything changes again, and the two sisters find themselves caring for each other. Ronja never stops dreaming, trying to keep her older sister’s spirits high; while Melissa, out of necessity and not choice, begins to do whatever it takes to avoid attracting the attention of social services.
As winter approaches, readers navigate the cruel, dreamlike world the two sisters embody. But fortunately, they are sustained by the magic of Christmas, the help of an elderly neighbor, a gift from a stranger, and the bedtime stories Melissa tells her little sister. These small gestures remind the protagonists, and us readers, that continuing to hope is never trivial, even when everything seems to suggest otherwise. Indeed, the constant interplay of childhood dreams with the cruel reality of those living on the margins is the strength of this small masterpiece, which moves from beginning to end, in the typical atmosphere of Nordic literature.
And if hoping for a happily ever after soon becomes almost impossible, just as Ronja’s dream of a cabin with a fireplace where she could stay with her unique family is unrealizable, sometimes:
“Miracles happen,” the caretaker always said.
“Sometimes there’s no other way out, and then a miracle happens.”
Written by Maria De Gennaro
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Ingvild Rishøi, La porta delle stelle, Iperborea, Milano, 2024
Original edition: Stargate – en julefortelling, 2021