A Blessed Child [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Linn Ullmann (Author), Sarah Death (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2008

From the internationally acclaimed author of Stella Descending and Grace, a captivating story of sisterhood and of the inescapable chords of childhood memory.\

Every summer Isak Lövenstad gathers his three daughters by different wives to the windswept Baltic island of Hammarsö. Here Erika, Laura, and Molly know, if only for the season, what it is to be a family, and here, in the society of children, each undergoes the rites of growing up. Though many alliances form and dissolve, none compares to Erika’s bond with the rebellious misfit Ragnar, the intensity of which makes them inseparable. But when they reach the age of fourteen and their relationship threatens to relegate Erika to Ragnar’s outcast state, she suddenly turns away—a common enough teenage betrayal that nonetheless precipitates an incident of such senseless cruelty as to forever alter Isak’s family. Twenty-five years later, returning to Hammarsö to see their father—now eighty, a bereaved widower, and in year-round exile there—the three women confront, finally, the specter of that awful summer, the mark of which each has since carried.

Bold and starkly beautiful, A Blessed Child is a haunting parable of innocence lost.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Amid summering tourists on the tiny Swedish island of Hammarsö, a blended multinational family comes together in this arresting and well-observed saga from Ullmann (Grace). Isak, a professor prone to fits of rage, has a loving second wife in Rosa and three daughters by three different women. The eldest, Erika, 13, and the youngest, Molly, five, are flown to Sweden in the summer by their mothers to spend some time with their brilliant, and infuriating father. Middle girl Laura, Rosa's daughter, welcomes them; together, the girls apprehend terror in Isak's irrepressible fits and, tragically, in Ragnar, a local boy Erika's age who doesn't fit in. The narrative moves back and forth in time, as the three daughters converge 25 years later on Hammarsö to visit their aging father, now mourning the loss of Rosa. In adulthood, each woman possesses a profound inner life haunted by buried childhood memory. While the book's tonal coolness won't be for everyone, the observations of teen life are exceptional, and Ullmann (daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann) successfully mines the traumas of youth for powerful adult emotions. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

Erika, Laura, and Molly, sisters with different mothers, are planning to brave a snowstorm to visit their failing father on the Baltic island of Hammerso. Isak Lovenstad, one of the pioneers of gynecological ultrasound, has exiled himself in what used to be his summer house on the island after the death of his second wife. As the three women make their way separately across Norway into Sweden to visit him, they remember the idyllic summers they spent on the island, gathered together by their larger-than-life father. One summer in particular stands out: when the misfit Ragnar, “the boy with matchstick legs,” gets too close to one of the sisters and falls prey to the evil that lives in groups of adolescents, with tragic results. Results that, 25 years later, each sister still tries to understand. Ullmann, daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, brings to her fourth novel an impressive voice, a facility with language and character that makes the story sing and resonate long after the last page. --Elizabeth Dickie

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (August 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307265471
• ISBN-13: 978-0307265470
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,773,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A step backwards, December 16, 2008

By 

Reader 100 - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Blessed Child (Hardcover)

Both GRACE and STELLA DESCENDING, Linn Ullmann's previous novels, were strange and compelling, and I read them at a gallop. This one took longer; I was constantly finding reasons to put it down and come back later. A BLESSED CHILD is more self-indulgent, I believe, drawing on the author's own experiences; more nostalgic; and more episodic and staccato, never really gathering steam and taking off. There are a few puzzles inside for those who care to solve them, part of the novel's appealing ambiguousness, but the characters remain fixed on the page and do not enter the reader's imagination. By all means authors should strive not to repeat themselves, but as an admirer of Ullmann's work I found A BLESSED CHILD to be a step backwards from the original voice of her earlier novels.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "A Blessed Child" -- Gifted story from a gifted storyteller, October 11, 2008

By 

Kent Mckamy "banjo_mojo" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Blessed Child (Hardcover)

"A Blessed Child" is an almost Rashomon kind of story, revolving around the perspectives of three sisters who return to a remote Swedish island to be with their aged father for what they believe may be their last time with him. Each daughter has a different mother, and each daughter experiences her own path to maturity in a different way. Author Ullmann weaves their stories together in a completely believeable way, making each's journey fascinating in itself. There is a seminal event which they all witness in unique ways, and deal with in equally unique ways. A satisfying book, well worth spending time with. The author makes the winter weather and the distant locale into "characters" in the story, giving a real feel for the remoteness and frigidity of a tiny Swedish island as the story builds compellingly to a surprising climax. One word about the translation, by a woman curiously named Death: it's first rate, colloquial and symbolic.