Present Tense Machine - A Novel

-An ingenious pocket universe.- -Caitlin Horrocks, The New York Times Book Review
-Gunnhild -ehaug is a magician of the highest rank.- -Catherine Lacey

On an ordinary day in Bergen, Norway, in the late 1990s, Anna is reading in the garden while her two-year-old daughter, Laura, plays on her tricycle. Then, in one startling moment, Anna misreads a word, an alternate universe opens up, and Laura disappears. Twenty years or so later, life has gone on as if nothing happened. In each of the women-s lives, however, something is not quite right.

Both Anna and Laura continue to exist, but they are invisible to each other and forgotten in each other-s worlds. Both are writers and amateur pianists. Both are married; Anna had two more children after Laura disappeared, and Laura is expecting a child of her own. They worry about their families, their jobs, the climate-and whether this reality is all there is.

In the exquisite, wistful, slyly p