Spring Night (Peter Owen Modern Classics) [Paperback]

Tarjei Vesaas (Author), Elizabeth Rokkan (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 2004 | ISBN-10: 072061189X | ISBN-13: 978-0720611892

Vesaas conjures brilliantly from the somber north.""-TLS. Vesaas (1897-1970), shortlisted for the Nobel Prize on a number of occasions, was one of Norway's greatest modern writers. In this 1954 novel sixteen-year old Sissel and her young brother Olaf have been left minding their parents' farm for the night. But when a strange family descends upon them, lost, in a broken-down car, the children have to cope alone. Grete, who is in labor, is accompanied by her distraught husband, childish father-in-law, and a mysterious girl, Gudrun, who seems to have stepped right out of one of Oalf's dreams. Vesaas's novel is a beautifully rendered portrait of adolescent experience. But by the end of the spring night there has been not only a birth but a death in the house, and adolescence has vanished forever.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Norwegian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Tarjei Vesaas was the author of several novels, volumes of poetry, and a book of short stories which was awarded an international prize at Venice in 1952. He was awarded several other prizes and was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1964, 1968, and again in 1969.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (November 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 072061189X
• ISBN-13: 978-0720611892
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,118,555 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:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book equal parts beautiful and devastating, February 10, 2011

By 

Jacek K. Belc (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spring Night (Peter Owen Modern Classics) (Paperback)

It may not have been spring, but I read most of the book over the course of a single night, and finished the last thirty or forty pages the next morning. Although Vesaas's novel is undoubtedly good enough to be appreciated anytime & anyhow, my experience with it seemed particularly apt... if you read it you'll see why.

The book opens with what is one of the most thrilling accounts of youthful exuberance I have ever encountered in prose, and though the book becomes considerably more subdued soon afterwards, the author's graceful style never lets off. Very few writers I know can match Vesaas's gentle yet powerful way with words. I read a library copy and do not have the book at hand, so I cannot pull any quotes to demonstrate this, but maybe it's for the better, since once I started things could easily get out of hand; Spring Night is fit to bursting with breathtaking, poetic gems--or dewdrops, rather (there's nothing quite so hard as gems here). One could say the book itself is like spring, full of blossoming, fragrant life.

But it is a sad and harrowing novel, too, almost unbearably so for those of us who remember times in our lives that matched those the characters are going through. Indeed, there is much that is familiar in the book, but equally essential to Vesaas's story is the strangeness that comes to pervade it. The spring night is a holy night, a mystical night, one that recalls the Feast of St. John the Baptist. As we read, we breathe deeply, and we sense both the homely and the alien in the air. Though nothing supernatural actually occurs, we are overwhelmed with wonder--but it's wonder that is endlessly tempered with reality, so our footing is never certain.

Now, I'm no writer of reviews, but that this book has (at the time I compose this) a mere 3-star rating because of the baffling dismissal courtesy of "The Northern Light" seems to me a travesty. I could not, in good faith, let this state of affairs continue.

Though Spring Night is currently the only Tarjei Vesaas novel I have read, I've an inkling that he is the kind of writer worth learning Norwegian for. But even in translation, this novel shines, shines, shines. Read it!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So good, so good, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Spring Night Hb (Unesco collection of contemporary works:) (Hardcover)

This is the book that can change your view of life. Two children, an accident... True life... One of the best books from Scandinavia ever...