Lucca

Rating:
Summary: The Inner Life of Human Relationships
Review: Can we ever really know another person? What is human connection--and disconnection--all about?

Danish author Jens Christian Grøndahl explores basic--and complex--questions of human relationship in this carefully detailed story of Lucca, a young actress who is blinded in a head-on collision, and Robert, the physician who oversees her recovery. Both characters have been damaged by love. We quickly learn that Lucca has a son and a husband from whom she is estranged. Robert is a divorced father with a young daughter who sometimes visits. We learn their stories as they come together through platonic self reflection and recall memories of past relationships to understand and heal.

With the same emotionally disciplined style of Silence in October, Grøndahl lets us deep into the minds and souls of these characters, but never lets us feel pity for them, only respect. His writing is brutally honest, intellectual and definitely European in genre. Grøndahl lays bare the innermost thoughts of his characters using a process that is slow and ponderous at times, but very effective for exploring the delicate path to redemption.

Like a Bergman film, Lucca is not an action tale and can be dreary and grey in its realism. But it is well worth the read to experience Grøndahl's unique depiction of his characters and his masterful literary style.

Rating:
Summary: A gloomy look at life
Review: Grondahl may be famous in Europe, but there must be something in his writing that just doesn't translate well into English. Lucca is the protagonist who we are supposed to like: she is beautiful, talented, and tragic--or at least that's what I think Grondahl wanted his readers to feel. However, Lucca comes off as more of a prig than anything else, and Robert is so detached from those close to him that it is difficult for the reader to like him as well. Lucca is beautiful, and we know she will get any man she desires, and even those she doesn't. There is only one surprising scene in the novel, and it's a disturbingly gross one at that. The rest of the plot seems to be filled with shallow passionate moments and relationships that never go beyond chic Eupropean detachment.

The author takes such a pessimisic view of love and life that it seemed better for my soul to stop reading Lucca than to finish it. But for some reason I did, and I can't say that I'm glad I have.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't get into it
Review: The reviews made it sound like I could get into this, but I'm about a quarter of the way through, and it's been an excruciating read. I read on the bus, and I often find my mind drifting, thinking about what I'm going to have for supper, for instance, or finding myself gazing out at the landscape. 86 pages and this hasn't grabbed me yet. Partly, I think it's that it is written with dialogue that's not set apart by quotation marks, so sorting out what is said, what is thought, and what is just narrative (and sometimes, who is saying it) is too much like work. It IS indeed a melancholy story, lots of married people having affairs, two depressed and depressing main characters who are not very likeable. Eh, think I'll move on to something else and give up on this one...