A masterpiece of Scandinavian and early modernist literature—and with more to come.
The third volume in Undset’s classic tetralogy finds the protagonist’s household riven, and with worse on the way.
Olav Audunssøn, the namesake hero of Undset’s epic, is a psychic mess at the beginning of this volume, the second of whose two parts is meaningfully called “The Wilderness.” A witness to the great transformations of the 13th century, Olav gives the reader plenty of reason to think he should have been a Viking berserker. Instead, he’s doing all he can to be a devout Christian, so when he travels from Norway to England on a trading mission, he goes to church to pray rather than pillage. He is obsessed by his deceased wife, Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, whose life he complicated by murdering her lover, a story that unfolded in the preceding volume. Olav feels little guilt for the killing but endless remorse for Ingunn’s mortal illness, so much so that when a wealthy English lady casts him come-hither vibes, he flees: “Olav was still holding her, but he was staring and listening to something over her head, as he felt his own desire seeping away, not extinguished but flowing far away from this woman. Ingunn was calling to him.” Ensorcelled by Ingunn’s memory, Olav is full of contempt for their son, Eirik Olavssøn, who wants nothing but his love and approval; the fact that Olav calls him a “wayside bastard” suggests there may be some issues with the genealogy, but then Olav, for all his piety, isn’t above fathering a few off-the-books kids out there on the fjord. Eirik and Olav reach something of a détente, though, just in time for a Swedish upstart to come on the scene attempting to stir up a rebellion against the king, affording Olav a welcome chance to kill a few enemies Viking-style—but at terrible cost. Rich in Catholic symbolism and with plenty of family drama and other mayhem, the book is as sturdy and swift-flowing as any work of Hamsun or Laxness.
A masterpiece of Scandinavian and early modernist literature—and with more to come.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5179-1334-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2023
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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