Alberta Alone

The Alberta Trilogy #3

by Cora Sandel, Elizabeth Rokkan (Translator)

By one of Norway's most distinguished twentieth century novelists. Alberta, now mistress to Sivert, a Norwegian artist, is living in Paris with their small son. While Sivert is involved in a liaison with a Swedish painter, Alberta falls in love with Pierre, a writer who has just returned from WWI. After a period of conflict, Sivert and Alberta return to Norway, and there Alberta's self- realization becomes complete. With subtlety and insight, Sandel depicts the gradual corrosion of a relationship against the background of the aftermath of the Great War.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature

297 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Cora Sandel was the pen name of Sara Cecilia Görvell Fabricius, a Norwegian writer and painter who lived most of her life abroad. Her most famous works are the novels now known as the Alberta Trilogy.

Sara Cecilia Görvell Fabricius was born in Kristiania (now Oslo). Her parents were Jens Schow Fabricius (1839–1910) and Anna Margareta Greger (1858–1903). When she was 12 years old, financial difficulties forced her family to move to Tromsø where her father was appointed a naval commander. She started painting under the tutelage of Harriet Backer, and while still a teenager moved to Paris, where she married the Swedish sculptor Anders Jönsson (1883–1965). In 1921 they returned to Sweden, where she won custody of her son Erik after divorcing Jönsson.

In her youth she tried, without much success, to establish herself as a painter. And it wasn't until she was 46 years old that her debut novel, Alberte and Jakob was published, the first in what became the semi-autobiographical Alberta trilogy. Sandel used many elements from her own life and experiences in her stories, which often centre on the spiritual struggles of inarticulate and isolated women. The Alberta trilogy traced the emotional development of a lethargic and unhappy girl into a self-sufficient woman. These novels earned her an immediate place in the Scandinavian canon, but it was not until the 1960s that Sandel, now living as a recluse in Sweden, was discovered by the English-speaking world.

Despite her great literary success, she remained hidden behind her pseudonym and lived a rather secluded life. She was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1957. Her home in Tromsø, built in 1838, now houses the Perspektivet Museum.

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

The title might seem to give away Alberta’s status, but then she’s the type of person who is alone even when she’s with others, including her small coterie of artist-friends and now her young child. Her character, established in Alberta and Jacob as the odd one in her family and in their society, continues. In fact, this last book of the trilogy calls back to the first book when the older Alberta once again has to endure an inane community get-together in her home country: Some things never change.

As with Alberta and Freedom, the reader is plunged into Alberta’s milieu with no preamble. The elements and complications of the plot are not unusual: mismatched couples, some with children; flirtations, liaisons and the possibility of real love, including its futility, comfort and loss. But, as in the other two volumes, Alberta’s interior life; her urge to be herself and belong to herself, in a world and a time that didn’t make that easy for any woman; and the descriptions of the settings around her are what make this book special.

If I didn’t feel the intensity I loved in Alberta and Jacob, that’s because Alberta has so-called matured and learned to temper her reactions. And if I didn’t “highlight” any passages here like I did so many times with Alberta and Freedom, that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel this story and live in its prose just as viscerally.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only woman truly creatively free was Sleeping Beauty, dreaming in peace behind a wall of thorns strewn with the bodies of princes. Society and Biology place female artists in an impossible situation - control over their bodies is taken from them at puberty (if not before), and their lives remain painfully and often violently delineated until death (and beyond – one only has to look at the differences in the way male and female artists are treated after they have changed tense to see this clearly).

For Alberta (and, of course, "Cora"/Sarah – it is unsurprising that she only felt able to write these books under a pseudonym) the only way to find space to be free is to be alone. These novels posit the depressing conclusion that, since our society is so irrevocably bent on dominating and controlling women, the only way out is through self-induced isolation.

As a child, as a daughter, Alberta is constricted by family, by duty, by bourgeois manners, by the cold in her bones, by the community-induced fear of becoming an "old maid". After her parents' death she travels to Paris, but there she is trapped by poverty and pregnancy. It is only in the final part of the trilogy, published in 1939, that a way out is found. You should read all three.

These novels each allow us to spend a year with Alberta – first when she is around 16, then in her early 20's and finally in her mid-thirties. They are moments of crisis, of transformation. Much that is important happens outside of these times though, of course, we are permitted glimpses and hints as necessary.

The prose is beautiful, and the psychological insight profound and complex. Reviewers are right to see connections to Rhys, Colette and Woolf, though there is a lyricism to the descriptions of the natural world which I find unique and deeply moving. The final book contains descriptions of the sometimes ambivalent, sometimes resentful attitude of parent to child which resonated powerfully with me.

The plot will not surprise you, the problems Alberta encounters are sadly not uncommon, but what makes these novels worth your attention is her voice, her mind and the fact that her perspective is one which remains underrepresented on your bookshelves.

Read her.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concentrate on her material? Alberta's material was fluctuating and billowing: a cloud formation illuminated now from this side, now from that, and which then disintegrated and disappeared; a mirage, that vanished and was all of a sudden there again; a whirling nebula containing glimpses of voices, accents, faces, gestures, landscapes, streets, interiors, all of it appallingly like everyday life. If a thread lay hidden in it somewhere, it was well hidden.

Alberta has continued her half life with me since Alberta and Jacob, until Alberta and Freedom. Alberta Alone was always. I know what will happen to her although there are no more Alberta books. I see her in the punishment of the wrong side of some people have lovers who love them, or children who see them. Son Tot, well one day he will be disgusted by his baby name. He stalks his mother's time and lives by daddy's judgement. Further away, back to his home in Norway maybe a wife for Sivert. What was with the Peter Owens book jacket claiming he was Alberta's husband? Of course he wasn't. Marriage is a carrot of uncertainty to dangle over her head. I won't marry you. Seven years since Alberta and Freedom. Fourteen since Alberta and Jacob. She had wanted to stay with her brother above rock bottom. This time magic might be stars align and family can collectively pretend home isn't a frozen cluster fuck. Alberta had no spine. Her freedom was total bull. It never was. Relatives push her to France on charity. She will remember her past self as if the current times of a penis receptacle is advancement and different than never saying no. Avoid the worst pushing to a decision on borrowed money, an article here. The worst would have been GOOD for Alberta if had meant change. Arms of men who care when they still believe she could be molded into what they want. Seven years of a poor artist she fears. I never believed that Alberta was going to save herself. It makes perfect sense that she doesn't because no matter what anyone tells her it isn't herself that Alberta wants. I wanted it so badly to be the case. Alberta has an inner life she denies. I loved how Sandel mysteriously slips it in. A mocking reference from Sivert about a story Alberta had once written about two people who wait together in the rain. I wanted to read this story. The glimpses are tantalizing. Alberta can see her own inability to move in the beaten wife and children of a filthy bricklayer. In the lost Parisian days she holds their kindred spirits at arms length. She was always like that. Almost sees the prostitutes as real people and then her bitchy snobbery holds her back. She almost sees the snobbery of a better off girl and wants better for her son. She keeps her own voice shut in a secret chest, though, always. It went beyond the fear that maybe it would come to nothing, that if she had to she couldn't. Alberta didn't want Alberta at all. It would be all right if she were one of the lucky ones. Some people must be the lucky ones. Some people go to bed in the arms of lovers who love them. (I think Alberta is too defeated to be one of these. Her most cherished moments with men are being scolded to be someone she isn't.) I guess I knew deep down she wasn't going to spontaneously change despite Peter Owens book jacket promises. Alberta never saw that her father spent their scarce funds on booze and had a private coal store while the rest of the family lived in an unheated arctic home! (If I could reach into the pages and shake a fictional character this would have been one of those times.) It was her MOTHER'S fault. The sexism is still there and turning me against Alberta. I kind of hate her and I kind of love her. She always held up guilty feelings to love someone better. She remembers a held against her time. Young Alberta would rush home from a warm dinner to find a guilted over family scene that had never missed her. She had had her way over Sivert once and now she is undeserving of a life place. How can you argue with Alberta about this when it is what she believes to her feet? I wish it had been different than this. I'm torn between how well Sandel created this life that there were no surprises and wishing that it had been possible. Enlightenment as I see it but then I guess that's not fair. When her friend from Paris, the sick Liesel, slinks home to the Balkans she doesn't miss her. The only person who was sad to see her go was me! (Liesel crushed my soul too. Giving up her art to wait for the pieces put together in the arms of a man. Does that happen for people? Do they just pretend it works? Or is it easier to rail at the wasted life if you can say it was because he used you and forgot you?) All those years she was there, pitching in during poverty and uncertainty. It isn't freaking fair. Come back Liesel! Alberta, hug your damned friend. She kisses her only once. It could have happened that the ice melted. I believe this was her and I want better. It makes me want to scream that the stupid penis rules the world. Liesel isn't any better but it isn't fair. They both blame Jeanette the wife of the writer Alberta has an affair with in her soul (it meant more to Alberta that he seems to take her side with an encouraging look than ANYTHING she ever could have given to herself. For fuck's sake!). I suspected his interest in Alberta was to lecture her about the virtues of the wife that he was so lucky to have to keep the house clean. He wasn't the bad guy for dumping their family troubles on Jeanette if they could (and they did) blame Alberta. Oh, she heaps all that pressure on him! Liesel and Alberta judge. Fuck this sexist shit. I want to be wrong and Alberta makes Alberta enough. I love that she needed the warmth and hate so much she's just standing there denying to it herself because there's some law that men can't pitch in the relationships they are in. Get in or get out, right? Fucking guilt. She was always like that.... Sighs. I'm going to miss these books.

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And what should she say, for her part? Now I have arrived. I took a long, stupid path, but I found the way here at last. I am grown-up and I know what life is and what I am doing, and that I want to be here. Here I can unfurl into a person.”

It’s been sometime since I was able to read a book consistently to completion, well over a month – what with life with its troubles and demands that cause endless interruptions, and I was afraid at some point that I might never be able to finish a book again. A needless fear since experience should have shown me that some periods are more difficult than others, and that clouds, no matter how heavy, pass eventually, making way for clearer skies before the heavy clouds return in a different form and then pass, and press repeat. But we tend to forget. It’s a wonderful coincidence that I was reading this book in such a period, since the core of Alberta’s story is just that: the vicissitudes of life painted in lush prose.

Speaking of the prose of this book (and the other two that precede it in the series), the passage below illustrates how Cora Sandel writes of places, people, plants, animals, and landscape with such sensuous detail:

“The tide was coming in. With long, lazy tongues the water licked at the land, creeping up behind and beneath the seaweed that grew round the smooth, slanting rocks, lifting it, rocking it, letting it float and dip, releasing it again, seizing it more greedily the next time. A wisp of cloud sailed across the sun; the enormous surface of milk and silk was changed at once into molten metal; the sand to the south and north dazzled the eye excruciatingly, as if the light were thrown down on to it by a shade; the screaming of the gulls took on a deeper tone. The wisp sailed on, the world lay there again, dissolved in heat haze, the sun was burning hot. A day for idling, for wandering; for living relaxed, without thought, without worry; a day from which to return renewed.”

From this bit one can see how keen Sandel’s eye is, and her years of training and working as a painter (Cora Sandel was an artist before she began to write) come through magnificently in her prose. Where the sea, a field, the skies, crowds walking back home from work, are depicted marvelously.

Alberta in this final book is all grown-up, different in certain ways and similar in others to the young woman we meet in the first book. She’s become a mother, she falls out of love with the artist she met in Paris, Sivert, and falls in love with a veteran of the first world war who is also a writer and married, and Sandel brings out brilliantly the complications that arise due to her new situations. From a provincial Norwegian town to Paris back to Norway again, through the various griefs and losses, dashed hopes and bitter disappointments, and loves and joys and friendships, still striving towards personal freedom and financial independence. Cora Sandel is able to capture and show to the reader the workings of inner lives, the formation and dissolution of human relationships, the difficulties of motherhood and being a woman, the frustrations of a creative life, as well as the outside world that enwraps all this, from the physical world itself to the social constructions and situations that give form to lives. She’s a brilliant artist.

Through these three books the reader is able to see life through the eyes of a budding artist in various stages of her life and in the different places she lived in, and in the process the times: the first world war, the influenza epidemic, Paris in the very racist days when Black people were being trafficked to be exhibited as freaks in shows as entertainment. (There’s that scene in the second book, Alberta and Freedom, where the protagonist who is pregnant shares a moment with a Black mother she sees in one of these shows and the importance of this connection. I don’t think I’m adept enough to write about that and the complexities of this scene. I wish someone like Christina Sharpe, both very capable and intelligent to analyze it, did, but I haven’t been able to forget despite the months that have passed since I read it.)

Plenty of reviews already bring attention to the fact that the trilogy is underread and underappreciated outside of Norway and Sweden, and that’s a pity. Linda Hunt in the afterword of the book explains how critics treated the book harshly for its focus on the development of a woman artist, blatantly misogynistic too, especially in the 1960s when the first English translation came out, and it wasn’t until the feminist movement had swept across the globe did the book become reevaluated with new interest. All in all this is a brilliant trilogy that still reads fresh despite the fact that it’s going to be a century next year since the first book came out, with a superb English translation by Elizabeth Rokken, and I highly recommend it to other readers.

[Marilyn Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just finished Alberta Alone, and this is the best book I've read in my two years as a booktuber on YouTube. If you like beautiful language, superb characterization, and an emotional story, just read it. I couldn't believe how modern a novel/auto-fiction account set in the 1920s could feel. I loved Alberta and her author, Cora Sandel. If I could give it ten stars, I would.

[Pelle "sometimes here" Parrafin]

La dem ikke lamme av de onde dagene da intet skjer i dem. Noe ligger og blir til der likevel. Noe en ikke vet hvor en skal gripe tak i.

[Jennifer Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book in a trilogy by Norwegian writer, Cora Sandel. The trilogy explores Alberta's life as she grows from a shy, young girl living in Northern Norway through her life in Paris during and after WWI as she struggles to become a writer.

In this last book of the trilogy, Alberta is at the French seaside with her son, Tot, and partner Sivert, a painter. Also with them are two other couples. They've all left for the seaside in an attempt to avoid the Influenza ravaging Paris. All three couples are unhappy, cheating on each other but more importantly all struggling to find their way both artistically and just as humans after experiencing the horrors of war. Alberta begins a relationship with one of the men staying with them, the married Pierre. Pierre and Alberta never have much of a physical relationship, but they connect over writing. Pierre was on track to be a successful author until the war changed him, physically taking away his hand and mentally his focus and desire to write. Alberta seems paralyzed by her own fears and insecurities and can't seem to do any work on her manuscript.

They all move back to Paris at the end of the summer, but things are not better. Sivert eventually decides to take Tot back to his parent's home in Norway and lets Alberta come along too. Though their relationship is over in all but name, they seem to both love Tot and as both are unwilling to leave him, they nominally stay together. When they return to Norway, things improve. Tot's health and confidence vastly improve. Sivert successfully returns to his way of painting (he had been experimenting unsuccessfully in cubism) and makes some sales. And Alberta finally begins writing again. Alberta finds the confidence to strike out on her own and make her way as a writer. The book ended with me convinced that she would make it.

Sandel's writing is beautifully subtle. The repercussions of the war on these young people permeates the book without being overly dissected. It's simply there. Alberta's struggles are internal and somehow undramatic and highly emotional at the same time. Most of all, Sandel's description of setting is wonderful, especially when she gets back to Norway. I also loved reading about Alberta's journey of writing her novel. Throughout the book there are ideas about what it is like to pour yourself into authoring a novel and I felt like I learned a lot about the writing process. I've read that Cora Sandel put many autobiographical elements in these novels and Alberta's writing journey struck me as the most authentic.

I've really loved discovering this trilogy. I highly recommend the first novel, Alberta and Jacob to just about everyone, especially anyone interested in Scandinavian literature. It is amazingly evocative of Norway. I didn't love the second book, Alberta and Freedom, but this last in the trilogy wrapped everything up beautifully for me and made me so glad that I read all three books. I think that Cora Sandel is an author that deserves to be more widely read.

[Mina Widding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ja för satan. Fortsätter i samma försökande trevande bort, som misslyckas av olika skäl, som är som livet är, som vem som helst i en dålig relation kan känna igen sig i. Skrivandet har ännu större plats här, och hon hjälps av mötet med Pierre, en författare med skrivkramp som ser hennes strävanden med skrivandet, uppmuntrar och utmanar henne. Det blir inte riktigt som hon tror eller vill, och det går trögt och det handlar om att vara mor och tvingas kvar av det skälet, för att inte förlora sitt moderskap. Inga enkla saker det. Som sagt, hade kunnat vara skriven igår, av mig eller någon annan (innehållsmässigt, nota bene), det känns sorgligt att samma problem återstår fortfarande. Men också om den knepiga skaparprocessen, att ta sig dit, in i skrivandet, våga tro att man får och kan, våga vara där. <3 Alberte

[Frank Ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant trilogy! The author writes beautifully (and the translation must be pretty good if that comes through) and the characters are perfect. So perfect that I want to pick them up and shake them, telling them to see what's right in front of their noses.

[Maudie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has changed my life.

[Ida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ikke like sterk som de to første, men likevel godt fortalt og fint språk. Sivert irriterer meg grenseløst, og skulle ønske Alberte var hakket hvassere, men det er vel normer jeg ikke forstår. Alt i alt en fin avslutning på trilogien om Alberte.

[Cath · Rating 4 out of 5]

My heart aches for Albertchen 💔 And for women with similar stories..

[Jim Rader · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first acquaintance w/ Cora was through her sharp short stories that focus on outsiders of many stripes: people in dubious hustling professions, marginalized oppressed woman and poor people, a woman in occupied Norway estranged from her refugee husband, all told in a crisp style, very visual (the author also a painter) economical descriptions, mostly told in third person. A quick elevating read.
My experience w/ "Alberta Alone" hasn't been as easy, as is often the case when my first exposure to a fiction writer is her/his stories./ Firstly, the claim made in the intro and blurb that each novel in this trilogy, this the last one, can stand alone is a tough sell. Several major characters appear straightaway, either directly or in Alberta's flashbacks. She apparently deserts domineering Swedish painter husband Sivert & teenage daughter Liesel after WW I for shattered disfigured French combat vet Pierre, a pre-war best selling novelist struggling to repeat success. They have a small son Tot. Then Pierre's legit wife Jeanne and little girl Marthe turn up at Alberta's ragged seaside house (Brittany), also Sivert, Liesel, Liesel's beau Eliel, very cluttered, tough to follow, as all characters are given almost equal attention. Except for the little kids, all are quite hip, arty/ literary types given to rarified exchanges, sometimes interesting, sometimes dull. And for all its Euro finesse, the self-conscious interior monologue and some dialogue evoke more recent, American autobiographical novelists Kerouac and Miller, especially Miller, as there is much fuss and feathers about writer's block./ Things pick up hallway thru 284 pg. saga, Part II starting off in Paris wherein the whole group relocates. Almost magically, the story's core crystalizes in its dual theme of Alberta's alienation not from only the men in her life, but from other people, proto-existential, if I may. So it's not a bad novel after all, just a slow one, but a novel for other writers only or readers highly sympathetic to the art.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This final volume of the Alberta trilogy is a well-told tale of three long-term unhappy relationships in post-WWI France, then Norway. Very realistic depiction of the miseries of having a child with someone one ends up not loving and an unromanticized picture of bohemian life with no money, particularly for women. This trilogy deserves to go back into print and to be widely read.

[sdv duras · Rating 5 out of 5]

reading the peter owen edition from 1965 0 elizabeth rokkan translation. The gradual corrosion of a relationship...

[Terje · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.75/5.0]
Lydbok, Gyldendal 2022, lest av Gjertrud Jynge, Operasjon Hjernerystelse.

Superhelten Alberte sliter videre med fordommer, menn, pliktfølelse og kjærlighet til Småen.

Overflatisk sett går det bedre med Alberte i Paris i den avsluttende boka i trilogien. Innenfor leilighetens fire vegger og inne i hennes sinn går det derimot tyngre. Sandler er fantastisk til å beskrive hva som rører seg i psyken til Alberte, og å levendegjøre hvilke problemer hun og hennes medsøstre har å stri med.

Språket er som alltid flott og blomstrende, noen ganger så utmalende at jeg faller litt av og må trykke på 15-sekunder-tilbake-knappen, men det får jeg ta på min egen dårlige konsentrasjon. Teksten hadde kanskje fortjent å bli lest, ikke hørt.

Innleser er Gjertrud Jynge. Hun leser svært bra, med en nydelig innlevelse. Noen ganger blir stemmene til karakterene litt for like, men det er allikevel ikke noe stort problem siden Jynge varierer intensiteten, hastigheten og styrken ettersom hvem som snakker. Hun er derimot ikke noen dialektekspert, så alle snakker med nordlandstonefall, også innlandsbønder på Østlandet.

[Katarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Den sista delen i trilogin handlar om mycket. Ojämlika relationer, kärleken till ett barn, krigets fasor, fattigdom. Mycket har förändrats de senaste hundra åren men skrämmande mycket känns igen i den bristande kommunikationen mellan kvinnor och män.

[Anja Hildén · Rating 4 out of 5]

Den sista delen av triologin är hårdare fokuserad på kvinnors villkor, under en tid då män ägde allt - kvinnors liv, deras tid, deras kroppar. Det är inte så länge sen, och den tiden skildras gastkramande.

[Vigdis Hobøl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Likte den veldig godt. Synes jeg også kunne kjenne at øynene vokste i ansiktet.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vill läsa om

[Joachim Sjöqvist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bästa böckerna jag läst.

[Mathea Mohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Alberte går etter, håndfallen, rådløs med seg selv»

[Malin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alberte är en ung kvinna som - till moderns sorg - inte är som de andra unga kvinnorna i den nord-norska staden. Hon är klumpig, lätt vindögd och har svårt att konversera med såväl de finare damerna modern umgås med, som de unga männen. Hon hade helst velat studera, men familjens inkomster räcker bara till att hålla lillebror Jakob i skolan. Jakob som varken kan eller vill få lärdomarna att fastna, utan drömmer om att gå till sjöss.
Några år senare bor Alberte i Paris där hon umgås i konstnärskretsar och oftast lever ur hand i mun. Hon tjänar några slantar på att stå modell för nån konstnär eller på att skriva artiklar, både i norska och franska tidningar.
Hon hittar kärleken, men när hon inte får svar på de brev hon skickar tröstar hon sig hos en av konstnärerna i umgänget. Och Småen kommer in i hennes liv. Men kan man hålla ihop med en person bara för att man har en tredje person gemensam? En liten person man inte helt är ense om hur den ska hanteras?
***
Trilogin om Alberte är bokcirkelns sommarläsning och med tanke på att det är en klassiker trodde jag den skulle vara… mer. Ibland blinkar det till och jag känner något. Men oftast är känslan mer i stil med Brasse Brännströms sketch om den färgblinde pojken som spelar färgkodat piano: grå, grå, grå, grååå… 

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the trilogy of which "Alberta and Jacobd" is the first novel. I was attracted to the location of Norway and Scandinavia in general and I like to explore rather unknown greats in literature. As a contented male, I also like to explore the dark and twisting tributaries of the female mind, especially of the intelligent, sensitive kind. Why men do not find the complexity of the person next to them more interesting than sports or politics, for example, is mystifying in itself. One thing that I've observed is that men seek immediacy while women seek depth in relationships.

While it has been some time since I finished the final volume of Sandel's trilogy, I am taking the long view of its overall effect on me. There are some works that pull you in and you don't know why. You just slavishly keep reading the whole body of work regardless of how long and seemingly mundane, but your body and soul recognizes an affinity that your present self does not and that is what happened to me. While I did not find Alberta very captivating, part of me did, and while I rated it a 3 ("meh") it should have been closer to a 4, maybe a 3.7, but it did not give me the boost I was looking for, probably similar to how Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Finland would affect me now.

Incidentally, over the past few months I've been watching the streaming videos of Rachel building her own cabin in a remote Swedish forest, of the Swedish woman, Cecilia, coping in Svalbard, Norway--almost the North Pole, and a couple of other people in similar circumstances in the general region of Scandinavia. Not to mention even a possible family tie and definitely that of an old-friend connection from high school to Sweden and Finland.

I recommend reading this trilogy if you are interested in depth rather than immediacy.

[Jessica Lethin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I denna del får vi följa Albertes liv som mamma, ett inte enkelt liv eftersom mannen hon fått barn med är ett tvättäkta, själviskt, svin. Oron för sonen, rädslan för mannen hon tvingas leva med, men också Albertes sedvanliga oförmåga att ta sig samman och rädda sig själv och sin son driver historien. Boken har två delar, den del som utspelar sig i Frankrike, och den som utspelar sig efter hemkomsten till Norge.