This bittersweet coming-of-age novel is a beautiful evocation of the student milieu of northern Europe in the 1960s - a time of new ideas and enormous social and political changes. Inger, a bright young woman from Fredrikstad, graduates from high school, spends a year in Edinburgh working as an au pair for a bourgeois Scottish family, then returns to Norway to study at the University of Oslo. There, crushes, clandestine relationships and the exhilarating first signs of the Scandinavian gay and lesbian liberation movement mark Inger's struggle to come to terms with her sexuality. At the same time she begins to see more clearly how her parents' alcoholism affects her family, making these relationships more complicated and confusing.
Gerd Mjøen Brantenberg is a Norwegian author, teacher, and feminist writer. She is also the cousin of radio and TV entertainer Lars Mjøen.
Brantenberg was born in Oslo, but grew up in Fredrikstad. She studied English, History, and Sociology in London, Edinburgh, and Oslo. She has an English hovedfag (main subject, comparable to a Master), from the University of Oslo, where she also studied history and political science. Since 1982 she has been a writer full-time.
She worked from 1972-1983 in the Women's House in Oslo. She was a board member of the Norway's first association for homosexual people Forbundet av 1948, the precursor to the Norwegian National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation. She has established women's shelters and has worked in Lesbisk bevegelse (Lesbian movement) in both Oslo and Copenhagen. In 1978 she founded a literary Women's Forum with the purpose of encouraging women to write and publish. She has published 10 novels, 2 plays, 2 translations, and many political songs, and has contributed to numerous anthologies.
Her most famous novel is Egalias døtre ("The Daughters of Egalia"), which was published in 1977 in Norway. In the novel the female is defined as the normal and the male as the abnormal, subjugated sex. All words that are normally in masculine form are given in a feminine form, and vice versa.
St.Croix Trilogien til Gerd Brantenberg er en reise full av følelser. En sikkelig god oppvekstroman om en jente som vokser opp og finner sin skeive identitet. Denne siste boka er fin, vond, trist, glad, litt utdatert, men generelt fin er det ordet jeg satt mest igjen med.
Siste kapitlet er KNUSENDE og skulle kanskje likt en litt mindre tung avslutning på en ellers veldig fin leseopplevelse.
This book was rather good - slow starting and then got better. The translation was quite good. Problems in every family in every culture - people are the same the world over. It was interesting to read about the women's movement in Norway and what they thought about the events happening in the United States. Not being gay, I found it fascinating that love is love, whether man/woman or same sex. I've always been accepting of gay/lesbian relationships and think all should be treated equally and have the same rights. It seems ridiculous that it is taking so long for the general population to come to this conclusion. Too many Bible thumpers out there who are not particularly Christian.