Hanna's Daughters: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Marianne Fredriksson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle | Publication Date: August 3, 1999

Sweeping through one hundred years of Scandinavian history, this luminous story follows three generations of Swedish women--a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter--whose lives are linked through a century of great love and great loss. Resonating with truth and revelation, this moving novel deftly explores the often difficult but enduring ties between mothers and daughters, the sacrifices, compromises, and rewards in the relationships between men and women, and the patterns of emotion that repeat themselves through generations. If you have ever wanted to connect with the past, or rediscover family, Hanna's Daughters will strike a chord in your heart. . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A chronicle of emotional and psychological exploration, this family saga, a bestseller in Fredriksson's native Sweden and in Germany, is an unerringly perceptive portrait of women in the flux of Scandinavian history. In this English translation, however, it gets off to a slow start, hobbled by spare prose and often stiff dialogue. But once the characters acquire identity, the novel begins to reverberate in the reader's mind. Set against the backdrop of the 1870s Swedish-Norwegian Union crisis and WWII, the plot skillfully interweaves the stories of three generations of women. Born in 1871, grandmother Hanna Broman is a woman of "sense and continuity," but her life is blighted when she is raped and impregnated by a cousin at the age of 12. Marriage to miller John Broman restores her honor and produces three additional children: Johanna andAinterestingly, given the titleAtwo more sons. As she matures, atheist-socialist Johanna is contemptuous of her mother, whose life has been so deprived that she must learn about mirrors, indoor plumbing and electricity. Johanna's daughter, Anna, is a writer living in the concrete suburbs, hungering to understand her antecedents. Ultimately, Anna acknowledges that she cannot find "a way home" in her research about her family; instead, she discovers that everything about them is "full of contradictions." As a result, this is a book that benefits from two readings because its patterns often are built on characters with identical names or similar personalities, many events are captured in disconnected vignettes and chronologies jump and overlap. Yet the unsentimental depictions of women's inner lives, of the resentment and bitterness that undermine many family relationships and of the harsh truths that can never be spoken, create a portrait of the human need to connect and of the spiritual isolation that often occurs in the absence of such connection. Rights sold in 27 countries; simultaneous publication in fall 1998 in U.S., U.K., Australia, Greece, France, Poland, Iceland, Japan, Brazil, Israel, Korea, Czech Republic; film rights to Bavaria Film in Munich; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-This novel will make young people wonder about their own families. Shifting back and forth across time and generations, the story introduces three strong Swedish women: Hanna, her daughter Johanna, and Anna, her granddaughter. Born in 1871, Hanna was sent into service at a neighboring farm at age 12; there she was raped by her employer's son. She bore her first child at 13, and was shunned by the whole community. However, the local midwife found her a husband, an older man from a neighboring province, and the couple grew to care for one another and lived comfortably. Their last child was Johanna. She and her mother were always at odds, but she and her father were very close. After his death when Johanna was eight, Hanna moved her four children to the city, where Johanna spent much of her time with her sister-in-law, who eventually gave her work in her hat shop. She had a stormy marriage, and one child that survived, Anna. Her story also reveals a troubled marriage. Anna, the educated one, the writer, tells the story of her mother and grandmother and their relationships with men and with their children. Then she begins to tell her own story. YAs will identify with the mother-daughter relationships portrayed here; time, place, and history may vary, but love, jealousy, passion, kindness, and friendship remain the same.
Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345433491
• ISBN-13: 978-0345433497
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #585,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #95 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Scandinavian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Women's saga, May 21, 2001

By 

Sharon Knutson "chinamomma" (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hanna's Daughters: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Hanna's Daughters is a tale spanning three generation's of a Swedish family. It is told by Anna, who in a last ditch effort to understand her mother, gathers letter, diaries, and journals to read about her mother and grandmother's life.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks with can be disconcerting until you catch the rhythm of the story. The life of the three women revolves around mother-daughter relationships and the path our lives take as a result of the decisions we make.

Each woman struggles with similar heartbreaks (although they don't always know what the other one is/has gone through) They struggle with marriage, children, death, and finding ones self worth in a sometimes harsh world.

While I enjoyed the story (possibly due to my Swedish heritage!) I still felt the story plodded in some sections so I only gave it a three star rating.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A touching story about a woman's life without being kitsch, August 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hanna's Daughters (Hardcover)

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a time - I never had time to read, but one nicht I grabbed it and could not stop reading. For a few days and nights I lived with Hanna, Anna, and Johanna - all three of them remarkable women in their times. It is very much a "women's book", I cannot picture men liking it that much, because they don't know (and they CAN'T) anything about the sometimes difficult relationships between mothers and daughters. This book even taught me a lesson: talk to each other as long as there is time, don't put it off. It's a wonderful book that makes you laugh and cry! withought being KITSCH.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful story of three generations of Swedish women., February 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hanna's Daughters (Hardcover)

The author claims this is not autobiographical, yet her insights into the depth of her characters might suggest otherwise. Not only the events of their lives and their families, but their feelings and thoughts at each moment along the way. While some of my book group did not like the interlacing of Anna's story into that of her mother's and grandmother's, I found this both a great literary device for this story(ies) and a way of keeping me from losing the continuity of the three lives and how the past repeats itself. The translation from Swedish resulted in rather terse and unembellished prose, but I liked this also. Being of Scandinavian heritage and knowing the story of my grandmother's hard life in Denmark and Minnesota, I could relate to the level of detachment women used as a defense mechanism and their stoic and silent way of bearing all things. The richness of the characters and story have stayed with me long after reading the last page. This is my test of a good novel.