Constance Ring, by Amalie Skram

Amalie Skram was a naturalist writer, perhaps the most naturalist of all Norwegian writers. She most well-known work is the four volume novel series entitled The People of Hellemyr. In Constance Ring, a different book altogether, Skram outspokenly covers such topics as sex, adultery and women's rights.

Constance Ring is a frank and open book, and raises questions which at the time (1885) were not discussed in public. It was initially refused by the author's scandalized publisher. However, today Constance Ring is considered a classic of Scandinavian and women's literature. It is a passionate condemnation of marriage and moral hypocrisy, especially the different standards for men and women with regards to sexuality, and has sometimes been compared to works like Madame Bovary and The Awakening.

Constance is a naive young woman who marries the 16 years older Edvard Christensen Ring, a well-to-do businessman who loves her but indulges in the casual adultery that is customary for men of his social circle. Constance is very unhappy in her marriage and in particular not pleased with their sex. However, she is a vibrant woman in her early 20s, very beautiful, and learns that she is attractive to men.

However, she soon she finds that no one will support her decision - not even her mother and sister - but she refuses to yield to the forces of a society that offers women few choices other than marriage. She divorces her husband, and marries again.

The second part of the book appears to be somewhat autobiographical. When Constance Ring finds out that her second husband has an illegitimate child, she enters into an affair with a musician, only to find that he has been having an affair with her maid, and that she expects a child with him.

Constance Ring is a strong, very engaged book that at the same time provides a rich description of some of the fundamental challenges facing women at the time. It is a valuable book, both as literature and in a larger, cultural and historical perspective.

You may also want to order Amalie Skram's Under Observation from amazon US.
Or, you may order Constance Ring (European Classics) or Under Observation by Amalie Skram from amazon UK.

Broken, by Karin Fossum

The opening of Broken is wonderful. It is a about a female author. There are people waiting in line to get in to her, to get their stories written by her. But she is tired. Then something unexpected happens: A polite, quiet man pushes his way forward in the line, and all the way into the bedroom of the author, wakes her up, and asks to have his story told before all the others. He can't wait for his turn to come. If his story isn't told, he doesn't think he will have much of a life. The author reluctantly agrees. This starts the second story line of Broken.

The author gives the shy and polite man the name "Alvar Eide" - invents him - and begins to tell (or invent?) his story. We follow his story as it unfolds throughout the book, as well as and at the same time, the relationship between Alvar and the author, who reflects both over his life and her own. Thus Broken deals with the intersection of an invented story (or is it real) and the real story of the person inventing it(or is that too invented?).

Alvar Eide is pictured (or invented?) as a shy, middle-aged man who lives a quiet and undramatic routine life, with no responsibilities to anyone. His parents are dead and he lives alone. He enjoys his work at an art gallery where he is a knowledgeable and conscientious art dealer.

One cold winter's day a young, freezing cold, drug addict comes into the gallery to warm herself, and Alvar feels sorry for her and offers her some coffee. From that moment on, he is unknowingly caught in a relationship that will have dramatic consequences for him.

Broken is a fiction book, but as exciting as a thriller. It is a different, clever, and touching story which describes how Alvar, a quiet, staid man becomes a dramatic creature, as well as about the author's life with her fictitious characters. Concerning the author, it raises issues about how much it costs to create literature, and how deeply involved she is with her characters. The book becomes a meeting place for (fictional) fictional and (fictional) real worlds. To some extent it resembles the relationship of man to God: We all want to be seen, to be visible, to experience good things with others. The author can give Alvar all of that, but tells him he has to make it happen himself.

Broken is a wonderful book, beautiful and controlled in its style, insightful, and with black humor and sharp observations. Perhaps Karin Fossum's best book so far! I think so!

Order Broken by Karin Fossum from amazon UK!

The Blindfold, by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt is an Norwegian-American writer (born 1955 in Minnesota).She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the writer Paul Auster, and their daughter, singer and actress Sophie Auster.

She has published four novels:

The Blindfold (1992)
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996)
What I Loved (2003)
The Sorrows of an American (2008)

The Blindfold tells the story of Iris Vegan, a young graduate student in literature at Columbia University in New York. The story is told in four interwoven sections shorter stories.

Iris is bright and troubled. In the book, she narrates her own story. In the first she works for a mysterious writer who wants her to write detailed descriptions of small items which had belonged to a young woman brutally murdered in the man’s apartment building.

In the second story Hustvedt shows us an affair Vegan has with a fellow student and a troubled, restrained friendship with his best friend.

The third story takes place in a hospital where she is treated for her migraine, and the strange relationship between Iris and the patients she shares her room with.

In the final story she forms a sexual relationship with a professor while doing a translation of a rather sadistic German short story. Iris lives out the story by walking the streets of New York nighttime dressed as a young man, and then after a while bonds with the professor.

The books is immensely creative and intriguing, but also dark and disturbing. It challenges constitutes a penetrating investigation of an unstable, deeply troubled, insecure and seeking mind. The Blindfold, I think, is the veil Iris places between her emotions and the persons she interacts with, and which only is let down briefly in a few instances. The book made me uncomfortable. I think I strongly disliked the main character. She is, at a fundamental level, extremely dishonest. She expects straight behavior from others, but actually turns relationships to others off and on as she wants, is manipulative, and lies and deceives friends and lovers alike.

But The Blindfold is a well crafted, excellently written book, and is disturbing enough to provoke thought. It has been described as a "postmodernist puzzle with a queasy eroticism and hints of perversion." It is deep, ugly and chilling. An amazing debut novel by Siri Hustvedt!

Also by Siri Hustvedt from amazon US: The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and her latest book, The Sorrows of an American.