Brightly Shining

Brightly Shining unfolds over one Christmas season in Oslo, where sisters Ronja and Melissa try to keep their small family functioning around their father's alcoholism. When their father briefly gets sober and takes a job at a Christmas tree stand, ten-year-old Ronja is hopeful it might be the turning point they need — but as he begins drinking again and disappearing into bars, it's Melissa who quietly takes over his job before and after school, for less pay than he was earning.

Their coworker Tommy draws Ronja into selling decorative wreaths on the side, splitting the small commission between the sisters and Tommy's soon-to-be-born child, with Ronja telling customers the proceeds go to "children in need" — which, in a sense, they do. Amid the cold and the adult failures around them, the girls find brief moments of warmth in unexpected kindness from people around them.

Ingvild H. Rishøi's short novel, translated from Norwegian by Caroline Waight, is a contemporary, unsentimental reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," centered on children absorbing the costs of an adult's addiction.