Staff Pick
This was sweetly tender, especially at first, and then a deep sort of grief bordering on despair begins to set into the main character's voice as she reveals doubts about the authenticity of her feelings for her deceased husband’s family. Ellinor is so starkly pragmatic and yet so sensitive, which comes across in the way she nitpicks the details of her loved ones' choices. To have placed a character book-ended between two traumatic losses brilliantly exposes the complexity of feelings and resignation that come with age, and the wisdom that blooms from enduring tragedy. It also perfectly captures the emotional landscape of a Scandinavian life. Recommended By Aubrey W., Powells.com
"Now your husband is also dead, Anna. Your husband, our husband." So starts the — sometimes melancholy, sometimes blistering — epistle from 70-year-old Ellinor to her best friend, Anna.
Ellinor and Henning, and Anna and Georg: two couples, best friends. They eat dinner together, they go on vacation together, until a crisis explodes, and both couples are devastated.
Ellinor's dissertation on marriage, tragedy, parenting, infidelity, and aging, among other things, is starkly heartbreaking and unrelentingly sad. Yet, there are moments of pure bliss, unbounded love, and poignant, razor-sharp insight. An amazing job by Jens Christian Grøndahl, Often I Am Happy is just beautiful. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This elegant and nuanced literary gem explores the intricacies of friendship, secrets, and two marriages, for fans of The Dinner and Dept. of Speculation.
"Often I am happy and yet I want to cry; / For no heart fully shares my joy." -B.S. Ingemann
Ellinor is seventy. Her husband Georg has just passed away, and she is struck with the need to confide in someone. She addresses Anna, her long-dead best friend, who was also Georg's first wife. Fully aware of the absurdity of speaking to someone who cannot hear her, Ellinor nevertheless finds it meaningful to divulge long-held secrets and burdens of her past: her mother's heartbreaking pride; Ellinor's courtship with her first husband; their seemingly charmed friendship with Anna and Georg; the disastrous ski trip that shattered the two couples' lives. Wry and mellow yet infused with subdued emotion, this philosophical, lyrical novel moves in parallel narrative threads while questioning the assumptions we cherish concerning identity and love.