What a book. Lightning caught the church on fire and Lavrans and Erlend both raced up the hill to try to save it. Lavrans went inside. As soon as I read that I wrote in the margin "He's gonna die." Then Erlend went in. Erlend stepped out to throw a chest clear of the fire. I still bet the church is going to collapse and kill Lavrans.

Obviously, the symbolism: before Kristin's and Erlend's wedding; lightning, the church, on a hill, fire, a "heat...grown till 'twas scarce to be borne," yeah, gotit gotit gotit. But the details. The book is shot through with sin, retribution, all of the biblical themes. If Lavrans dies trying to save the church, as he tried to save Kristin's "honor"...Okay, the last thing that Brother whatever-his-name-was said to Kristin before dying was that Lavrans must be spared knowledge of Erlend doing his 17-year old daughter and Kristin is now knocked up with Erlend's child and is going to be showing at the time of the wedding. Lavrans would have killed Erlend dead if he found out about either of those things. So the moral is Erlend, that cad, is going to get away with this, as he has sooo many other things? That's not a biblical moral. But I haven't been right in predicting where this book is going once so maybe Lavrans doesn't die?...