A Blessed Child

May 12, 2008
Four coming-of-age novels set in the states and abroad show that no matter where you're from, it's tough to be a kid.
A Blessed Child
Linn Ullmann
, trans. from the Norwegian by Sarah Death. Knopf
, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-307-26547-0

Amid summering tourists on the tiny Swedish island of Hammarsö, a blended multinational family comes together in this arresting and well-observed saga from Ullmann (Grace
). Isak, a professor prone to fits of rage, has a loving second wife in Rosa and three daughters by three different women. The eldest, Erika, 13, and the youngest, Molly, five, are flown to Sweden in the summer by their mothers to spend some time with their brilliant, and infuriating father. Middle girl Laura, Rosa's daughter, welcomes them; together, the girls apprehend terror in Isak's irrepressible fits and, tragically, in Ragnar, a local boy Erika's age who doesn't fit in. The narrative moves back and forth in time, as the three daughters converge 25 years later on Hammarsö to visit their aging father, now mourning the loss of Rosa. In adulthood, each woman possesses a profound inner life haunted by buried childhood memory. While the book's tonal coolness won't be for everyone, the observations of teen life are exceptional, and Ullmann (daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann) successfully mines the traumas of youth for powerful adult emotions.

August 1, 2008
Erika, Laura, and Molly, sisters with different mothers, are planning to brave a snowstorm to visit their failing father on the Baltic island of Hammerso. Isak Lovenstad, one of the pioneers of gynecological ultrasound, has exiled himself in what used to be his summer house on the island after the death of his second wife. As the three women make their way separately across Norway into Sweden to visit him, they remember the idyllic summers they spent on the island, gathered together by their larger-than-life father. One summer in particular stands out: when the misfit Ragnar, the boy with matchstick legs, gets too close to one of the sisters and falls prey to the evil that lives in groups of adolescents, with tragic results. Results that, 25 years later, each sister still tries to understand. Ullmann, daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, brings to her fourth novel an impressive voice, a facility with language and character that makes the story sing and resonate long after the last page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)