Private Confessions [Paperback]

Ingmar Bergman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 1997

Ten years ago, Ingmar Bergman traded in the technological tools of filmmaking for the simpler devices of prose. Yet the cinematic lens still seems to reside between his thoughts and his words. Private Confessions continues Bergman's autobiographical project, which he began in two earlier novels and two volumes of memoirs. In the spare words of blocking and camera angles, this slim novel stages a story of adultery through which we see Bergman's attempts to understand his parents' troubled relationship. Through a series of revelatory confessions, Anna tells of her affair with her husband's young friend Tomas and her unhappiness with her life as wife of a dour country pastor. Bergman nails scenes in taut prose and stunning bursts of dialogue, but the overall story is unrelenting, with little to hold as beautiful, save the starkness of Bergman's expression and the deep probing of his own creative psyche.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ten years ago, Ingmar Bergman traded in the technological tools of filmmaking for the simpler devices of prose. Yet the cinematic lens still seems to reside between his thoughts and his words. Private Confessions continues Bergman's autobiographical project, which he began in two earlier novels and two volumes of memoirs. In the spare words of blocking and camera angles, this slim novel stages a story of adultery through which we see Bergman's attempts to understand his parents' troubled relationship. Through a series of revelatory confessions, Anna tells of her affair with her husband's young friend Tomas and her unhappiness with her life as wife of a dour country pastor. Bergman nails scenes in taut prose and stunning bursts of dialogue, but the overall story is unrelenting, with little to hold as beautiful, save the starkness of Bergman's expression and the deep probing of his own creative psyche. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Sweden in the 1920s is the locale of this intense novel by the famed Swedish film director. Feeling imprisoned in a 12-year marriage to a man she no longer loves, Anna Akerblom betrays her frequently absent husband, Henrik (a pastor), by engaging in a passionate, at times live-in liaison with his best friend, Tomas, a young theology student. Her admission of this scandalous affair poisons the atmosphere in which her children grow up. Bergman bases this lyrical, charged autobiographical novel on his parents' relationship and his troubled childhood, terrain explored with ruthless candor in his first two novels, The Best Intentions and Sunday's Children. Anna, his vital, wayward heroine, oscillates between joy and guilt, faith and doubt, rebellion and moral confusion as Bergman explores his lifelong themes: loneliness, the search for God, sin, salvation, free will, the mystery of death. Structured as a series of five "conversations" that reveal Bergman's mastery of dialogue and gift for setting scenes, the story jumps ahead to 1934 as Anna, who has jettisoned her illicit lover, visits the deathbed of the priest Jacob, her cancer-ridden father confessor. It twists back ironically to 1907, when Jacob warns 17-year-old Anna, just before her first communion, against infamies committed in the name of love. One senses that this dark gem of a novel, set in resonant prose as elegant as a classical sonata, is a catharsis for Bergman.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (November 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559703954
• ISBN-13: 978-1559703956
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,573,433 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will haunt you, July 21, 1998

By 

Michael Owsowitz (Buffalo, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Private Confessions (Paperback)

This book is fragrant with familiar Bergman film images...icy black water; musty country homes with overstuffed furniture; well-ordered lives and well-ordered people quietly coming apart in a particularly polite Scandanavian manner. It makes one thing clear - the Bergman leitmotif, characters at once overcome but distant from themselves - simultaneously subjects and objects - is no artifact of his cinematic technique. He depicts his interiors much as we might imagine them from his exteriors. And as in film, images of nature represent the soul.

Read this book. It will haunt you. It most probably will not alter your conclusions about love- but it will alter the way you think about the subject. It goes beyond easy categories of tragedy (although it is certainly that). It depicts the human condition as an imprisonment so tortuous, so hopeless, so inherently perverse, that it somehow becomes sublime. Misery as meditation. It will haunt you.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uncle Jacob says: "buy it!", September 14, 2000

By 

Nothis One (Lisbon, Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Private Confessions (Paperback)

It's like reading a script for a masterpiece movie. Great book, but read it only, for full enjoyment, if you are inventive enough to do the film of the book inside your head. If you're not that kind of reader, it's still an excelent book, but you may be missing a great deal of it.