The Price of Water in Finistere [Paperback]

Bodil Malmsten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2006

At the age of 55, Swedish writer Bodil Malmsten abandons her native country and settles in Brittany. Embroidered in this memoir are poignant, outraged, thought-provoking observations on a sweeping range of subjects—the elicit pleasures of bargain-hunting, the misery of writer’s block, social democracy, racism, tulipomania, the controlling of moles and slugs, death, and the delights of wild weather. Malmsten’s passion and humor shine through every episode, offering the reader a window into a solitary life at once touching and hilarious.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 2000, poet and writer Malmsten left the false promises, small-mindedness and cold weather of her native Sweden for the remote seaside French village of Finistère, "where the land comes to an end in Europe—fin des terres, finis terrae." If not engrossing, this memoir—about trying, unsuccessfully, to get away from the world—has a quiet and honest charm. At her new Brittany home, Malmsten putters in her garden and enjoys her solitude, but the project of writing a book about her time in Finistère forces her to express what she previously only had to live through. While commenting on petty but humorous annoyances like the high-priced resource of the title, her botanical struggles and her few ventures into friendship, Malmsten dwells on her happiness in the face of her leftist despair about the state of the world. The book moves with an episodic, sluggish pace but might appeal to both lovers of a quiet book about the garden and the more socially minded who struggle with "the guilt of the privileged." (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

'Lively, enhanting and deeply serious...Abounds in wonderful descriptions of her intimate relationships with plat-life, and in seascapes...Extremely funny' - Guardian. 'Hilarious, heartwarming and movingly honest. This is a book about self-exile and creation that only a poet could write' - Adam Thorpe. 'I loved the comments about English gardening as preposterous, and her ability to conjure so much out of so little without ever leaving her garden...truly wonderful' - Gerard Woodward. 'Lyrical and pithy, full of wry humour, yet weightier than most fat tomes, The Price of Water in Finistere is a book about the past and the state of the world we have created...I adored it' - Lisa Appignanesi.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House UK (January 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099466678
• ISBN-13: 978-0099466673
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,624,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars cultivating one's garden, May 13, 2006

By 

Beckett (Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Price of Water in Finistere (Paperback)

The price of water in Finistere is a book with dimensions from here to paradise. It can be read or eaten, or both.

I have read it as a manifest for breaking up, as an inspirig script for gardening, as an historical book and what not.

Bodil Malmsten has the gift of putting a glimpse of eternity in the everyday life. The language itself is a glimpse of eternity - the way she spellbounds the reader by using no other word but that which is just perfect. Her way of making a sentence by putting together the words you never thought you would see in the same context simply makes every second of reading an adventure.

Bodil M invites the reader into her private room without getting sentimental. She will laugh with you, cry with you - she even yells at you but never without blaming herself first and foremost. This is a book about what it is to be human, but without the scholarcrap. Read and proceed, cultivate your garden with The price of water in Finistere.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If one is good, two is better, January 5, 2007

By 

A. Bingham (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Price of Water in Finistere (Paperback)

It must be pretty good, my wife liked it so much she got a couple more for friends.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A welcome new voice to these shores, May 11, 2006

By 

Stuart Klipper "Ice sailor" (Minneapols, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Price of Water in Finistere (Paperback)

This is a lovely piece of work. A wise and lively book filled with both verve and insight. The writer is a mature woman with an idiosyncratic ?lan who retains a girlish vivacity and whimsy. Her insights and observations are both fine and fun, serious and serendipitous. She tells about her two homes; the one she hails, and the one where she's staked a new claim -- one that made her who she is, and the other she is making her own. Her mounting passion for gardening and how she recounts her progress -- or lack thereof -- offers a full dollop of wonderful lagniappe. Her politics are honestly rendered; she is not out to preach or proselytize, they are just part and parcel of all her other wherewithal.