Vesaas's The Ice Palace

I read it with great pleasure over two October evenings.

Style really struck me - the way Vesaas wrote this is unlike anything I've seen. Short, descriptive, and a touch pretty sentences allowed for an abundance of quotable phrases. It clashed so strongly with the crude, uncanny way the characters talk. I wonder if that's just what you can expect from Norwegian prose in translation, but I wouldn't be surprised.

There are two girls - Siss and Unn - who grew close in just one bright evening. Siss is the popular girl; Unn was recently orphaned and keeps her distance at school. There is something terribly sad and queer and secret about Unn. The intensity of their meeting left them both embarrassed.

The next day Unn skips school, as she is not ready to face Siss yet, and wanders into an ice palace - a fantastic, giant structure of ice formed by an ever-freezing waterfall, the water still roaring inside. She is losing her way in it, and as far as we know, never leaves.

The book describes how Siss handles her sudden gain and loss of a friend - that's really the core. I read it as a mystery, and was better for it, although I might have been too hasty. Nevertheless, fundamentally it is a story of overcoming, written in a curious way. I don't think I've experienced cold this vividly.

I checked other reviews and really didn't like how they make sexuality play a part in the book. I didn't see it.

Maybe because I am simultaneously repressed and perverted? I am a bit weird in that I have a specific key in choosing my recent novels, but I am rather aloof to those criteria when reading. Well, I did enjoy certain scenes in the movie, though.