Saga of Gosta Berling part 2

Wow, I love this book.  It is a bit of magic.  I never thought I liked adult fairy tales, but now I know I do. 

I have to take that back a bit, I quite like Syliva Townsend Warner's books I've read like Lolly Willowes.  It starts out a normal story of not much happening.....which is the kind of books I like...and then turns into a fairytale. 

Back to Gosta, I'm about half way through now.  The translation is so good, I can imagine that it must be very lyrical in Swedish.  Each chapter is like another story of Gosta and his effect on women, but not in a Don Juan sort of way (though it is clever that the beautiful, powerful horse in the story is called Don Juan).  It is hard to describe without it sounding airy-fairy.....because it is anything but.  The stories are quiet dark and the magic sneaks up on you as you are reading. 

One of the stories is about a girl (Anna) has been promised by her family to marry someone, but has been taken in and entranced  by an older man.  The family ask Gosta to go and take her away.  Instead they are smitten by each other and while driving past the house of the family (with Don Juan as their horse) they are set on by black wolves.  When they try to head back the other way and pass the house again, they are again set on by the black wolves.  They give up and Gosta drops her off at the families house. They are happy and Gosta realises that he can't have her.  Anna feels that God sent the wolves to make sure she made the right choice....later she isn't so sure if it was God or not.

My writing doesn't do it justice as the story is so lyrical you are swept along like you are listening to a folk song.  It is making me think that I might give Angela Carter a read after all.  We have a lot of her books in the Uni library I work at and they obviously teacher her ever couple of years.  So I might just have to give it a go.

On another topic...does anyone have a good app for blog writing?  I've downloaded one or two but they never let you write very much.  I have an Iphone and a Kindle fire and either one I download doesn't let me scroll down for writing, only for looking at the page....if you see what I mean.... 

Ah well....happy reading!!!

Selma Lagerlof The Saga of Gosta Berling

I like to go through the Pulitzer Prize winner occasionally to look for writers I might enjoy but haven't heard about.  I started this when I read started to.read Knit Hamson.  I found this time the first woman who won in 1909.  She also fits into my Scandinavian reading scheme too.  I'm looking forward to trying this.  I'm reading her bio at the moment.  Sometimes I do this with new books, but sometimes it is good to go into it blind.  She sounds really interesting so we will see how the book