Book Review: The Women at the Pump by Knut Hamsun

When fate strikes badly and turns life completely upside down thwarting all plans, it’s usually a very unsettling experience that can make feel at a loss even the most flexible mind. Some people quickly pull themselves together and take life back into their own hands trying to make the best of the situation, while others give in to despair and just drift on with the current unwilling to set a new course because it just doesn’t seem worthwhile or at least possible. The protagonist of The Women at the Pump by Knut Hamsum, the recipient of the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the latter. Having lost one leg in an accident aboard a cargo steamer and unfit to work as a sailor again, Oliver Andersen takes to brooding and idling away his time. Not even for the sake of his growing family, he is able to change.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen

The Longing for Love:
Marie Grubbe by Jens Peter Jacobsen

In the nineteenth century the discoveries of Charles Darwin not only revolutionised science and introduced the idea of evolution into human thinking, they also changed literature inspiring authors to a new approach to fiction writing. One of the first in Northern Europe to break with Romantic narrative tradition and to begin telling stories in a naturalistic style that showed man as a beast driven by instincts and urges was Danish botanist and writer Jens Peter Jacobsen (»»» read my author’s portrait). After his successful literary debut with a short story, he published in 1876 the historical novel Marie Grubbe. A Lady of the Seventeenth Century (Fru Marie Grubbe. Interieurer fra det syttende Aarhundrede). It is loosely based on the true story of a Danish noblewoman who died in 1718.

Read more » (external link to Lagraziana's Kalliopeion)

Book Review: Désirée by Annemarie Selinko

Life sometimes takes such amazing turns that, if they came into the mind of a writer, even the most daring among them might refrain from using them in a book because they seem just too far-fetched to make a realistic story. To a historical novel based on well-researched facts, however, they can give the magic touch of a fairy-tale come true as is the case with the book that I’m reviewing today. In the 1940s, an Austrian author of popular novels chose to base what was to be her last and most famous work on a true story from revolutionary France that ends on the Swedish throne. Désirée by Annemarie Selinko is the fictionalised account of the stunning fate of Désirée Clary that reminds of the story of Cinderella, but the silk merchant’s daughter from Marseille who was the first love of Napoleone Buonaparte and who eventually became Queen Desideria I of Sweden and Norway really existed.

Book Review: Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell

Foggy mornings and early dusk are an unmistakable sign that autumn is approaching once again. For me this means that it’s time to close My Reading Summer of Nordic White Nights after thirteen weeks of hopping criss-cross around the Arctic Circle. My last destination is Scandinavia, more precisely Sweden. The country has gained some notoriety as a hotbed for excellent mystery writers and also the author of the book that I’m reviewing today probably wouldn’t be as famous as he is, hadn’t he produced a series of popular crime novels starring Inspector Kurt Wallander. Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell, however, belongs to a different genre of fiction although like a thriller it largely revolves around death and ghosts of the past. It’s the story of a former surgeon whose secluded life is turned upside down when an old love turns up after almost forty years and asks him to keep a promise while it’s still time.

Book Review: Iceland's Bell by Halldór Laxness

Justice seems to be a natural and clear concept, but as we all know it’s not easily achieved – in spite or because of many as well as complex laws and the people who enforce them. Especially poor people are often helpless victims of unfair treatment or even arbitrariness although the situation has a lot improved since the era of Enlightenment. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, class-distinctions still made a big difference in court and elsewhere. The central figure of Iceland’s Bell by Halldór Laxness is a perfect example for a man who – like his whole nation – becomes the plaything of the powerful because he is poor and uncultured. But he is a sly as well as lucky guy who in the turmoil of Scandinavian history struggles for justice helped by an inexperienced girl in love with a scholar who only cares for old books and the scholar himself.

Book Review: People in the Summer Night by Frans Eemil Sillanpää

Since times immemorial Midsummer has been an important date in the solar calendar with many traditions linked to it, especially in Scandinavia, but not only as proves the fact that William Shakespeare wrote a play entitled A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, my literary rambles take me to the Finnish countryside this week. Due to luminous and warm nights summer there almost necessarily invites to stay up like the protagonists of the classical novel People in the Summer Night by Frans Eemil Sillanpää do for very different reasons. People give birth, people fall in love, people crave for sleep, people stroll around observing and musing, and people die in this novel of the Finnish Nobel laureate revolving around the human condition in all its diversity.

Book Review: Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel

Summer days are long in the North, but unfortunately where there is light there is shadow too. The more reviving and cheerful the warm season may be close to the Arctic Circle the more dazing and depressing the cold and dark winters can be. For the teenage protagonist of Alberta and Jacob by Cora Sandel the pleasures of summer are few and too quickly past to make her forget the chill and the dimness of winter which use to weigh heavily on her soul. However, it’s not just the inclement climate in one of the northernmost towns of Norway that makes Alberta feel miserable. The always tense atmosphere at home, constant pecuniary troubles and the necessity to keep up the appearance of a happy bourgeois family in a small town add to her increasing desperation that separates her from her family and society altogether. 

Author's Portrait: Amalie Skram

Amalie Skram (1846-1905)
 Source: Wikimedia Commons
scan from Samlede Værker
[Collected Works]
by Amalie Skram

Past Sunday, on 15 March 2015, was the 110th anniversary of the death of Amalie Skram, one of the foremost women writers and feminists that Norway saw in the nineteenth century. Her books were subject to much controversy in her time because they openly branded the often lamentable living conditions of women in patriarchal Norwegian society. Many of her works are still in print in Norway and the neighbouring countries, but outside Skandinavia Amalie Skram is little known today although – to my great surprise – at least five of her novels and the correspondence with her second husband Erik Skram are available in not too old English translations.

Book Review: Winter’s Tales by Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen)

The award of a literary prize usually implies that others who would deserve it just as much or even more get nothing. It goes without saying that among the unlucky losers of the Nobel Prize in Literature there have been several women writers, too. Eliza Orzeszkowa (»»» read my portrait of her) and Concha Espina (»»» read my review of The Metal of the Dead) were two of them and for today’s review I chose a short story collection of another almost-laureate of the Nobel Prize, namely Winter’s Tales by Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen. Having been nominated for it several times and on the shortlist of 1961 (together with Graham Greene, John Steinbeck and the winner Ivo Andrić), the Danish author might have outdone John Steinbeck in 1962, hadn’t she died in September, thus before the official announcements in October.

Book Review: The Winter War by Philip Teir

It seems a strange inconsistency of nature that winter is still advancing although days have been growing longer for almost a month already. Around me many people are feeling the effects of the cold and dark season now: they are gliding into winter depression. Some just get sad and listless while others turn irritable and start nagging. In The Winter War by Philip Teir the gloom of winter adds to the problems of a long-time married couple and life isn’t a bed of roses for the two grown-up daughters, either. The novel set in contemporary Finland and London shows how the family members cope with the continuous small challenges of life, each one according to his or her own nature.

Author's Portrait: Jens Peter Jacobsen

As regards literature, Northern Europe has been fertile ground ever since the old Norse sagas were written down, notably the Icelandic Edda. The fact that fifteen authors from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature between 1901 and 2013 tells of a vivid narrative tradition. In fact, the names of Scandinavians can be found on bestseller lists regularly, but of course there are important classical writers from the region, too. Every bibliophile will at least have heard of Knut Hamsun, Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf, August Strindberg, and Sigrid Undset – to name just a few –, but how about Jens Peter Jacobsen, a late contemporary and fellow-countryman of Hans Christian Andersen?

Jens Peter Jacobsen was born into the family of a wealthy merchant in Thisted at the western end of the Limfjord in Jutland, Denmark, on 7 April 1847. He was the oldest of five children and early showed exceptional talent as well as passion both for science and literature, a double penchant which is visible in all his work. As a sixteen-year-old he moved to Copenhagen to finish secondary school and stayed there to study botany at university. He was a gifted scientist and in 1873, although he had never taken any exams, he presented his outstanding dissertation on freshwater algae which was rewarded with the prestigious Golden Medal of the University of Copenhagen. 

As a student Jens Peter Jacobsen became immediately fascinated by the still recent discoveries of Charles Darwin and, over a period of about five years, translated into Danish for the first time two of his key works, namely On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. He also wrote scientific articles for a radical Danish journal to promote and establish Darwin’s ideas in the north of Europe where they were hardly known until then. In addition his engagement in the Theory of Evolution helped the young man to get over disappointment in love and a deep religious crisis and it led him to adopt the atheistic, ie naturalistic view of the world which is reflected in his literary work. 

It was with a short story titled Mogens that Jens Peter Jacobsen made his debut as a writer in 1872. Since already in this first published literary work man is shown as an animal that can’t but follow its nature, it was considered highly revolutionary at the time. The story, however, is admired above all for its strong impressionistic language. In the early 1870s the author also set out to write Marie Grubbe. A Lady of the Seventeenth Century (Fru Marie Grubbe), a historical novel based on a Danish noblewoman who gave up her station to become the wife of a ferryman and be happy, but due to his scientific and translation work along with failing health it wasn’t finished before 1876. 

Already in 1873, during a travel around Italy, Jens Peter Jacobsen was severely struck with tuberculosis which cast a shadow on the rest of his life preventing him from pursuing his plans for the future. As from the mid-1870s he gave up for good science and fully devoted himself to literature. He returned to Thisted to live with his family and travelled to the South, especially Italy and France, repeatedly for reasons of health. He wrote his second novel titled Niels Lyhne, a semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman about a young man who loses his faith and becomes an atheist, and published it in 1880. By then his health had deteriorated already considerably. 

After 1880 Jens Peter Jacobsen’s poor health no longer allowed him to write much. He finished a few tales like A Shot in the Fog (Et Skud i Taagen: 1875), Two Worlds (To Verdener: 1879) or The Plague in Bergamo (Pesten i Bergamo), There Should Have Been Roses (Fra Skitsebogen) and Mrs. Fonss (Fru Fønss) which he brought out in a collection, together with his first published work, under the title Mogens and Other Stories (Mogens og andre Noveller) in 1882. These stories, like all other literary works of the author, are characterised by an extremely precise and introspective style which uses to be labelled as naturalistic. Because their plots are made up of a string of picturesque scenes which remind of great impressionistic paintings his writing is also referred to as impressionistic. 

On 30 April 1885 Jens Peter Jacobsen died from consumption, as tuberculosis was often called then because it visibly ate up the body, in his family’s home in Thisted. Some of his late works, notably his poems were published posthumously and widely read not just in Denmark, but also abroad, above all in Germany. 

The influence of Jens Peter Jacobsen on other writers has been enormous, especially in Scandinavia and Germany. Rainer Maria Rilke is known to have been particularly passionate about his work because he mentioned him in his letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, which were later published as Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter: 1929). Of course, he had the advantage of speaking Danish. Also Thomas Mann was well acquainted with the innovative work of the Danish author. In his novella Tonio Kröger from 1903 the parallels to Jacobsen’s novel Niels Lyhne are particularly obvious. Thus it is justified to call the Dane an important precursor of German symbolism. 

Since Jens Peter Jacobsen has been dead for almost 130 years, all his writings are in the public domain. English translations of his novels Marie Grubbe from 1917 and Niels Lyhne from 1919 as well as the collection Mogens and Other Stories from 1921 can be downloaded as free e-books from ManyBooks.net.

Book Review: Before You Sleep by Linn Ullmann

For today’s review I picked a piece of contemporary Scandinavian literature for a change. And no, it’s not a crime story or a romance although it sometimes seems to me as if hardly any other writings from the European north made its way into Austrian bookshops these days. Instead my choice is an entirely fictitious narrative about the influence that our families and personal history have on who we are and how we deal with life. It’s the presence of a child who doesn’t yet know his parents’ and grand-parents’ past that starts the stream of memories on which Linn Ullmann built her first novel Before You Sleep to explore the vicissitudes of life and love. 

Linn Ullmann, real name Karin Beate Ullmann, was born in Oslo, Norway, in August 1966. After graduating in English Literature from New York University the daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and film director Ingmar Bergmann worked as a literary critic in Norway. In 1998 she brought out her debut novel titled Before You Sleep (Før du sovner) which immediately earned her much critical acclaim. In the new millennium followed her novels Stella Descending (Når jeg er hos deg: 2001), Grace (Nåde: 2002), and A Blessed Child (Et Velsignet Barn: 2005). The authors latest published novel is The Cold Song (Det dyrebare: 2011). Linn Ullmann lives in Oslo, Norway, with her family. 

The frame plot of Before You Sleep is set in Oslo, Norway, in 1998. The main narrator is Karin Blom who is taking care of her seven-year-old nephew Sander while his parents are on a second honeymoon in Italy to save their marriage. In the opening scene the two lie in bed waiting for the phone call to tell them that they have arrived safe and sound at their hotel. Karin has allowed the boy to stay up to say good night to his parents, but it’s already after midnight and they should have heard from them hours ago. To kill time Karin tells Sander a fairy tale about the north wind and the sun which was among the things buried in a time capsule during the World Fair in New York in 1939. It’s a piece of family history and starts a train of memories which seemingly at random connects the past seven decades with the present. The Blom family has seen ups and downs just like any other family and they struggle to make their dreams of happiness and love come true, but for everybody it means something different. Each generation has adopted its own strategies to deal with the moments of joy and grief that make up life. While Karin’s grandfather, Rikard Blom, followed his dream of America and was perfectly happy in the 1930s selling costumes including dreams in his New Yorker shop called Cinderella Scissors, his wife June relied on being disciplined and severe to herself like a soldier who only advances and never looks back. Karin’s mother Anni trusts in her looks, above all in her irresistible smile, but it isn’t enough to hold her husband who leaves her and their two daughters as soon as he feels that love is over. When she grows older, the awareness of her fading beauty inevitably plunges her into confusion and makes her take a stupid decision. Karin’s sister Julie is soft and defenceless against the hardships of life. She gets married to feel safe in the refuge of love and family. And Karin… she got into the habit of lying to protect herself from pain, but her armour also prevents her from finding the human warmth and happiness she always longed for.

The greatest part of Before You Sleep is the first-person narrative of Karin. It’s a meditative story not just about the narrator herself, but about her entire family that through example and education shaped her character. Karin’s world is populated by unique types with clear outlines. Certainly, their distinguishing traits are exaggerated, sometimes even to the point of the absurd and funny, and yet, they all feel so realistic that it wouldn’t be surprising at all to run into them around the next corner. Even the stray cat making an appearance in the last part of the book doesn’t make an exception there. The novel’s language and style are unpretentious and easy to follow despite the many flashbacks on family history and Karin’s own past which constantly interact with the present. The prose is rich in often powerful pictures. Also several episodes are salted with surreal symbols that, giving them a thought or two, don’t seem that far-fetched after all.

All in all, I enjoyed Before You Sleep by Linn Ullmann very much. It was an amusing read which made me think too and therefore I’m more than willing to recommend it for reading.

Book Review: The Emperor of Portugallia by Selma Lagerlöf

Life isn’t always easy. Now and then most of us have to go through a situation when reality is so hard to bear that it almost drives us crazy. At such times many people withdraw into themselves and some seek relief in the realm of imagination. Usually this escapism is temporary and limited to reading novels or watching films, but others are drawn further away from reality. Hundred years ago the first female laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature wrote a story about a man who slips into a dream world and is much happier for it. Of course, I refer to the novel The Emperor of Portugallia by the Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf which I decided to review today for ROSE CITY READER’s European Reading Challenge 2013. 

Selma Lagerlöf was born in Mårbacka, Värmland, Sweden, in November 1858. While working as a teacher, she began writing her famous first novel The Story of Gösta Berling (Gösta Berlings saga: 1891). As from 1895 Selma Lagerlöf dedicated herself entirely to writing, but only her novels Jerusalem and The Holy City: Jerusalem II (Jerusalem I: I Dalarne: 1901; Jerusalem II: I det heliga landet: 1902) earned her undisputed renown as a novelist. The author’s best known work up to this day is the children’s book The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige: 1906/07). In 1909 Selma Lagerlöf was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature and five years later she became the first female member of the Swedish Academy. The Emperor of Portugallia (Kejsarn av Portugallien: 1914) is said to be her last great work since in her later years she wrote little. Selma Lagerlöf died in Mårbacka, Värmland, Sweden, in March 1940. 

The novel The Emperor of Portugallia is set in Southern Sweden between 1860 and 1870. A girl is born to poor Jan Anderson and his wife Katrina working on the Falla farm. A beautiful sunset inspires the father with the perfect name for the baby: Glory Goldie Sunnycastle. Jan loves his daughter and their relationship is very close. When Glory Goldie is seventeen, the new master of Falla threatens to drive the family away from their home because the late master of Falla never thought it necessary to give Jan property papers for their land. Moreover, Jan and Katrina can’t raise the huge sum which the new master wants now. So Glory Goldie persuades her parents to allow her to go to Stockholm. She believes that taking service in the capital she can easily earn the necessary money within a few months. From the first day Jan misses his daughter and anxiously waits for her return. As time goes by and no word from her arrives, he begins to gradually fill the blank surrounding the girl’s fate with his imagination. Rumours of her immoral conduct reach the village, but in Jan’s dream world Glory Goldie is the spotless Empress of Portugallia… which naturally makes him the Emperor of Portugallia representing her in the country. Jan wears now the stiff, high-crowned leather cap and the long, silver-mounted ebony stick of the old master of Falla as his imperial regalia and begins to act as he thinks befitting a person of his high rank. He loves talking about his noble daughter and the villagers like listening to his fantastic stories. He doesn’t notice when people make fun of him and ever again it seems that his madness makes him clairvoyant. In this way fifteen years pass. At last Glory Goldie returns to surprise her parents and is plunged into a world beyond her understanding.

The entire novel revolving around The Emperor of Portugallia reminds of a sad fairy or folk tale. Language and style of the author are simple, yet very powerful and moving. The story’s beginning is slow because nothing out of the ordinary happens, but this normality only prepares the ground for the despair in which Jan is plunged as soon as his daughter Glory Goldie leaves home and for his wild imagination which transforms the idealized girl into the Empress of Portugallia. His madness allows him to challenge the established social hierarchy and although the villagers often make fun of him, they tolerate and even hold him in certain estimation after a while because he has a good heart… and maybe because they are a bit afraid of his prophecies, too. In the end, those few who wished him ill are all crushed and those who were good to him are rewarded like in every fairy tale. 

All in all, The Emperor of Portugallia by Selma Lagerlöf was an enchanting read although also an increasingly sad one towards the end. I enjoyed this novel written a whole century ago very much and I think that it deserves more readers. I don’t have to think twice to recommend it!

* * * * * 

This review is a contribution to the perpetual Read the Nobels challenge.

For more information and a complete list of books that I already reviewed for it »»» please read my sign-up post!

Book Review: Fair Play by Tove Jansson

As the season suggests, on my tour around the European continent I’m moving today from Hungary northwards to Finland, the home country of Santa Claus and his reindeers. Every year millions of letters addressed to the white-bearded gentleman in red are delivered to Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi at the Arctic Circle where he resides according to legend. However, I’m not going to review a Christmas novel – not yet. Instead I picked a book by a writer belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland: Fair Play by Tove Jansson. The author’s international fame is based above all on her stories for children revolving around the Moomins, but she also wrote noteworthy novels and short narratives for adults like the work which I’m reviewing today.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki, then Grand Duchy of Finland, Russian Empire, in August 1914. After her arts studies in Sweden and France she made her living as a writer, painter, illustrator, and cartoonist. In 1945 she brought out The Moomins and the Great Flood (Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen) which was the first in the series of Moomin novels, picture books and comic strips produced over 25 years. Then Tove Jansson‘s dedicated herself to adult fiction producing among others the novels The Summer Book (Sommarboken: 1972), Sun City (Solstaden: 1974), The True Deceiver (Den ärliga bedragaren: 1982), and Fair Play (Rent spel: 1989) as well as several collections of short stories like The Listener (Lyssnerskan; 1971), Art in Nature (Dockskåpet och andra berättelser: 1978; also translated as The Dollhouse and Other Stories), Travelling Light (Resa med lätt bagage: 1987), and A Winter Book (Meddelande: 1998). All along she was also a highly successful painter. Tove Jansson died in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2001.

The protagonists of Fair Play are Mari and Jonna, a writer-illustrator and a filmmaker-graphic artist in their early seventies, who are living somewhere at the Baltic Sea, presumably Helsinki and one of the small islands off the Finnish coast respectively depending on the season. They have been close friends – companions – since childhood and share their lives dwelling

“… at opposite ends of a large apartment building near the harbor, and between their studios lay the attic, an impersonal no-man’s-land of tall corridors with locked plank doors on either side.” 

A series of seventeen seemingly unimportant episodes as can occur on any ordinary day shows how the two women managed to work and live together for so long without losing respect, admiration and love for each other. From the very beginning it becomes clear that allowing each other space has a key role in it. It’s a prerequisite for them to thrive, to simply be themselves and to go their own artistic ways with the support of the other, yet without her unasked meddling.

 “And over the years, [Mari]’d learned not to interfere with Jonna’s plans and their mysterious blend of perfectionism and nonchalance, a mix not everyone can properly appreciate. Some people just shouldn’t be disturbed in their inclinations, whether large or small. A reminder can instantly turn enthusiasm into aversion and spoil everything.” (Changing Pictures) 

Mari and Jonna know the capricious nature of all creative urge. Between them there’s no need to talk about it, no need to explain sudden irascibility and unrest or the unexpected wish for retreat and solitude. They are familiar with each other’s habits and moods before, during and after the act of creating a new piece of art. They understand and do as bid because for both it’s best that way. After all, each one appreciates and admires the work of the other, its power and uniqueness, but also the thought and effort put into it.

“They never asked, “Were you able to work today?” Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they’d gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected—those often long periods when a person can’t see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.” (Videomania) 

However, each one of the elderly women is a person of her own right and none of them is prone to submissiveness. So it goes without saying that they aren’t always of one mind and that they quarrel like every couple. In the end, they always sort things out one way or another. Life taught them that they can’t control everything and that sometimes it’s better to let go. They are painfully aware of getting older and of their dwindling strength. They go on living together and travelling together, but at the same time Mari and Jonna have each a life of her own, a life filled with friendship and love.

In Fair Play Tove Jansson produced a very fine and calm piece of literature about creativity and the life-long friendship of two women trying to reconcile life and art in their relationship. Fairness and playfulness are the essential qualities evoked from beginning to end. In a strict sense the slim book is a collection of seventeen vignettes, but the short stories are interweaved and combine to a character study of the two protagonists, a fact which makes it seem justified just as well to call it a novel. There’s no elaborate plot linking the stories and all things considered there isn’t happening much in Fair Play. On the other hand, the psychological conditions of the artist as well as the creative process itself get much room in it and form kind of a red thread. The author’s style is clear and unpretentious at first sight, but the stories use to have a philosophical dimension, too, which isn’t always obvious and which therefore may be less accessible to a quick reader.

For me Fair Play by Tove Jansson was an easy and light read in which I often recognized myself as an artist. I enjoyed the calm stories of everyday life very much and it was nice to see the relationship of two women depicted as true friendship instead of a never ending series of stupid intrigues. Consequently I recommend the book for reading.

Book Review: Jenny by Sigrid Undset

The past hundred years have seen many important changes. History books are full of their facts and figures, but also literature furnishes proof of everything that has been going on. Novels allow us a glimpse into the past, into a society which no longer exists and which amazes us by the differences and the similarities to our own world. Outside Scandinavia the Norwegian Nobel Prize laureate Sigrid Unset is known above all for her historical novels, but in reality she produced a greater number of contemporary novels like Jenny which I’m reviewing here today.

Sigrid Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, in May 1882. Until 1909 she worked as a secretary to support her family. Then she devoted herself entirely to writing although her literary breakthrough came only in 1911 with her third novel: Jenny. Her greatest success were the historical novels published in the 1920s. The first was the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, consisting of The Bridal Wreath (Part I, Kransen: 1920; in other editions The Wreath or The Garland), The Mistress of Husaby (Part II, Husfrue: 1921; also translated as The Wife), and The Cross (Part III, Korset: 1922). In 1924 the writer converted to Roman Catholicm. Between 1924 and 1927 followed the orginially two-volume and now four-volume series of The Master of Hestviken: The Axe and The Snake Pit (Part I and II, Olav Audunssøn i Hestviken), In the Wilderness and The Son Avenger (Part III and IV, Olav Audunssøn og hans børn) which earned Sigrid Undset the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1928. The later works of the writer are again based in a contemporary setting with an increasingly religious touch. During the German occupation of Norway between 1940 and 1945 she lived in exile in New York. Sigrid Undset died in Lillehammer, Norway, in June 1949.

The novel Jenny begins with Helge Gram's long yearned for arrival in Rome, the eternal city. When night falls, he gets lost in the maze of unknown streets, but he sees two young women whose appearance betrays them as Northerners like himself and who he ran across already earlier that day. Shy as he is, he has to work up his courage to address them and ask them for help. They are Jenny Winge and her friend Cesca Jahrman, two painters living in Rome. Since Helge is completely new in town, Jenny invites him to join their group which includes the painter Gunnar Heggen and the Swedish sculptor Lennart Ahlin. They all have dinner in a café. During the following weeks they pass much time together, above all Helge and Jenny. On her birthday in January Helge avows his love to Jenny and asks a kiss of her. At first Jenny is reluctant because she doesn't feel like him, but eventually she gives in.

"She was twenty-eight, and she would not deny to herself that she longed to love and to be loved by a man, to nestle in his arms, young, healthy, and good to look upon as she was. Her blood was hot and she was yearning..." (Jenny in Part I, Chapter VIII)

The next months are filled with billing and cooing each other neglecting their friends as well as their painting and historical studies respectively. When Jenny's return home is impending in spring, they agree to get married in a couple of months, but Norway is a completely different world than Rome. The atmosphere in Helge's family which is full of jealousy and hate weighs on Jenny. Against her will she is drawn into the net of dissimulation spun by Helge and his father Gert, a failed artist and a womaniser. Jenny and Helge get estranged from one another. When Helge realizes that he isn't and can never be everything in the world to Jenny, more than her work and her friends, he breaks up with her and leaves. Later that night Helge's father Gert visits Jenny to see how she is. Other visits follow and after a while Jenny gives in to his increasing advances. At Christmas Gert leaves his wife and Jenny knows that it's time to end their affair. She visits her friend Cesca in Denmark where she discovers that she is pregnant. She decides to have the baby alone. Hiding away first in Denmark and later in a German seaside resort at the Baltic Sea, she gives birth to a son who lives only six weeks. Grieve-stricken and desperate Jenny travels to Rome again joining her painter friend Gunnar Heggen who does everything in his power to cheer her up. After several months he declares that he loves her and asks her to marry him, but Jenny can't make up her mind to accept the proposal. Then Helge turns up in Rome all of a sudden.

"It all came back – the disgust, the doubt of her own ability to feel, to will and to choose, and the suspicion that in reality she wanted what she said she did not. .... She had pretended to love so as to sneak into a place in life which she could never have attained if she had been honest.
She had wanted to change her nature to fall in with the others who lived, although she knew she would always be a stranger among them because she was of a different kind. ... She felt as if she were dissolving from within" (Jenny in Part III, Chapter XI)

Helge knows nothing of Jenny's affair with his father or of the dead baby and believes that they can go on where they stopped two years earlier. Jenny isn't determined and strong enough to send Helge away and to resist his kisses. They spend the night together, but Jenny has already made up her mind to end her sufferings once and for all as soon as Helge leaves. Gunnar remains behind to mourn her at her grave.

Considering its time of origin, Jenny is not just a realistic, but also a very modern novel. It concentrates on the protagonist's inner development and the way how she copes with her surroundings and her desires. Consequently the stream of consciousness is an important stylistic device used to show Jenny's inner confusion and conflicts. On the one hand Jenny wishes to be independent and an artist; on the other hand she desperately craves for love. Sigrid Undset was the age of her protagonist when she wrote the novel and yet unmarried, but already in this early work she expresses her conviction that the biological nature of a woman inevitably implies the overwhelming wish to be a mother and a wife. Every feminist will feel challenged by this message. However, Sigrid Undset proved much psychological insight into the souls of her protagonists and an enviable skill to tell a capturing story.

As a matter of fact, I have been agreeably surprised by this almost forgotten classic of Scandinavian literature. Jenny was a read which I enjoyed very much although I couldn't always comprehend why Jenny and the others acted or thought the way they did. No doubt, I would have written a different story about them, but then I am I and it's hundred years later than in the book. In any case I'm ready to recommend this novel for reading. It's really worth the time.

An English edition of the novel (translated by W. Emmé) is available as a free e-book here. The new translation of Tiina Nunnally is said to be a lot better and closer to the original, though.