The Ice Palace

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely beautiful
Review: A beautiful book. The imagery is lovely, and I got hooked when one of the characters actually wanders into the ice palace. The descriptions of the light, and the interplay of the changing colors and shapes of the ice were mesmerizing--I stayed up late and couldn't go to bed. And in the morning it seemed it should be all ice outside instead of the height of summer. Tremendously atmospheric, simply splendid. The first book in about six months to make it straight to my read-again shelf. And short--a quick read if you're busy.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely beautiful
Review: A beautiful book. The imagery is lovely, and I got hooked when one of the characters actually wanders into the ice palace. The descriptions of the light, and the interplay of the changing colors and shapes of the ice were mesmerizing--I stayed up late and couldn't go to bed. And in the morning it seemed it should be all ice outside instead of the height of summer. Tremendously atmospheric, simply splendid. The first book in about six months to make it straight to my read-again shelf. And short--a quick read if you're busy.

Rating:
Summary: the burden of a secret
Review: From the first sentence Tarjei Vesaas draws the reader into a world of icy chill and unspoken foreboding ,drawn with language as spare, beautiful and relentless as the wintry nordic landscape. Two girls on the brink of puberty experience a moment of furtive sexual and spiritual awakening that neither is emotionally prepared for; when one of them subsequently vanishes from her home the other is lost in a welter of guilt and confusion. An unusual and evocative exploration of emotional isolation, both real and self imposed

Rating:
Summary: True art!
Review: One of the most beautiful books ever written. You are not literate before you have read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Austere, Primeval, and Haunting
Review: Vesaas's book is beautiful.

His style is experimental and modern, which means that he presents information in a slightly elliptical way, perhaps one that more closely echoes the motions of actual consciousness. This means that you may have to read the same passage two or three times: there are very few topic sentences introducing clearly defined paragraphs. Luckily, his vocabulary is pitch-perfect: small words, chosen for precision rather than pretence.

A novel has two major compenents, one being the social background of the story and the other being the story itself. The background is crystalline and very, very Norwegian: a harsh climate; reserved, good people; an aura of isolation that may only come from years of cold. The story itself turns on a secret and a promise, and the young girl Siss's reaction to them: not a secret like those in Babysitters' Club books, nor like the secrets in a spy novel: but a compelling one, an all-encompassing one, one that drives people in a way that doesn't make sense in a wholly rational world and yet drives them all the same. I won't say more.

Highly recommended. Oh-- and read it quickly. Like, perhaps, Faulkner (though not as difficult), you'll lose track of what's going on if you take too much time between readings.