The Ice Palace (Peter Owen Modern Classics)

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Vesaas might have viewed life as gossamer of renewed promises but never without one; much like the Ice Palace that stood subdued in summer, embracing dissolution but tirelessly raising its head again in winter without exception. Vesaas must have experienced the tingling calmness that a battered palm transfers upon touching a healthy skin; much like how a tumultuous, windy evening of tight-lipped conversation can be the analgesic for months of revitalizing discoveries. Vesaas must have witnessed a beautiful painting becoming priceless with a careless but feisty stroke of brush; much like the reinstating zephyr of souls, that with or without their presence, turn daily life, aromatic.

She behaves almost bewitched, and I was under the same spell. I wanted to shout at her GET OUT OF THERE, and at the same time, I needed to know what was in there, too. Parts of the novel are difficult to read, as Vesaas leads his young character down a road of no return, but it is a remarkably powerful evocation of the human condition.In simple, poetic language it tells a fairly simple if devastating tale of friendship and childhood. Maybe it's because I've lived most of my life in regions of tropical monsoon climate, but I love the cold, the snow, the blizzards, the ice structures, the frozen lakes, the endless white landscapes. In theory, I'm completely besotted with it.

A wonderfully cathartic read for anyone who, like me, has been forced to sit through Frozen one too many times. Like a bleak Scandi rewrite, this also features a lonely girl who makes her way to a magical palace of ice in the wilderness, except that here, instead of belting out a jaunty power-ballad, she succumbs satisfyingly to hypothermia. What's that, Elsa? Oh, the cold does bother you, after all? Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you stripped down to a minidress and started harmonising.A young white forehead boring into the darkness. An eleven-year-old girl. Siss. It was really only afternoon, but already dark. A hard frost in late autumn. Stars, but no moon, and no snow to give a glimmer of light. She was ready for sleep; she was even warm as well. It was not cold in here at any rate. The pattern in the ice wall danced in the room, the light shone more strongly. Everything that should have been upright was upside-down – everything was piercingly bright. Not once did she think this was strange; it was just as it should be. She wanted to sleep; she was languid and limp and ready. The Ice Palace is haunting and deeply disturbing -- though in as much of a good way as 'disturbing' can be. Das Eisschloss (1963) von Tarjei Vesaas ist einer jener Klassiker, die lange unter meinem Radar flogen. Ich meine, es ist überhaupt mein erstes Buch eines norwegischen Schriftstellers. Auf BookTube, vermehrt im englischsprachigen Raum, hielten es jedoch immer mehr Leute in die Kamera und so wurde auch ich darauf aufmerksam. Ich vermute, dass es an dem wunderschönen Cover der Penguin Classics-Ausgabe liegt, die so erst 2018 erschien. Wie dem auch sei, ich bin froh, es endlich gelesen zu haben.

Create character profiles using interesting adjectives (create a new mysterious character who Ivan will meet in the forest) Is-slottet was also winner, on publication, of the 1964 Nordic Council's Literature Prize. 50 years later the English translation won the Fiction category of the inaugural (and unfortunately short-lived) Daphne Awards, founded in 2014, to revisit the book awards of 50 years earlier and see which books had stood the test of time: Many years ago (decades even) I watched this movie on television about the life of American poet Maya Angelou. The details of the story have long ebbed away but there’s this one scene that I recall vividly. In it a sort of teacher figure is telling the young Maya about how beautiful words can be, how wonderful it is to love them. I guess this conversation remained with me because at the time I didn’t understand it. I loved reading books already, I loved the stories they told and the adventures I could vicariously experience but words in themselves? That didn’t make sense to me yet. Over the years I have come to know differently. I’ve learned to read and love poetry, to read it aloud and enjoy the resonance of words painstakingly chosen. I now know that words can be used to evoke happiness or heartbreak, fear or foreboding, they can create sounds and even music for those that can hear it. And they can be used to build otherworldly palaces made of ice of a beauty that is both extraordinary and deadly: Create a plot using drama (record plot ideas with partner and act out the scenario using new character) The vivacious 11-year-old Siss lives in a rural community in Norway. Her life is changed when a quiet girl, Unn, moves to the village to live with her aunt after the death of her unmarried mother. Siss and Unn can't wait to meet. They finally do, at Unn's house. They talk for a while, Unn shows Siss a picture from the family album of her father, then Unn persuades Siss that they should undress, just for fun. They do, watching each other, and Unn asks whether Siss can see if she is different. Siss says no, she can't, and Unn says she has a secret and is afraid she will not go to heaven. Soon they dress again, and the situation is rather awkward. Siss leaves Unn and runs home, overwhelmed by fear of the dark.Unn is the new girl at an isolated, rural Scandinavian school. Her unmarried mother recently died, and she does not know her father. Unn holds herself apart from the other students, declining to join their social group even when she is invited, simply answering, “I can’t.” Siss, an outgoing, popular student leader, respects the strength of Unn’s aloneness, and is excited and intrigued by something intangible about Unn’s “aura.” When Unn sends Siss a note saying she must meet her, Siss is thrilled. They're both excited by this get-together, but also unsure of themselves -- of what they want and can expect from each other, of what to say and how to behave.

Sally Carrol realizes that the winter pastimes she enjoys are all activities for children and that the Bellamy crowd is just humoring her. She feels out of place, seeing the North and its people as “innately hostile to strangers.” She is offended that Mrs. Bellamy will not use her full first name, and that she disapproves of her bobbed hair and smoking. At first the palace seems difficult to penetrate, but Unn suddenly finds a tiny gap she can squeeze through and then another, journeying through the palace where she finds a succession of rooms: The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace. Set in a minimalist setting somewhere in a land covered with ice and snow, this novel starts with two young girls striking up a magnetic friendship. What lies ahead seems endearing and full of promises. Yet, as these two friends struggle to act and find words to convey their feelings, there is a deep unknown casting its inescapable shadow. Siss insists on being part of it -- and as someone who talked to Unn so recently they keep asking her whether or not Unn might have said something to indicate where she went, or why.

They've found each other, and for each it's both a terrifying discovery and a relief, even as so much has been left unsaid. Siss and Unn, two eleven-year old girls living in an isolated, rural community somewhere in Scandinavia, need only a single evening together to forge an uncommon friendship that will change their lives irreparably. It's been an unusually cold autumn and an unlikely ice palace of epic proportions has formed from a frozen waterfall, and the dark and the cold have dominated the villagers' minds. The author wrote a dozen novels, almost all of which have been translated into English. He wrote in Nynorsk, a dialect of Norwegian. Is-slottet. - Oslo: De norske bokklubbene, 2002. - 124 p. - (Århundrets bibliotek) - ISBN 82-525-5096-7 (hardcover)