This book is a tough slog psychologically for the reader. I read about fifty pages this morning and they made me psychologically tense. I put the book down. It was bothering me in the head.I have never been able to predict what is going to happen next and that is still the case with only forty pages to go! I don't know how it is going to end with Kristin. Everybody else the book is done with. Their fates have been resolved. And in the prior fifty pages Sigrid Undset has given us at least one "moral" to the story. But I don't know if the moral is going to condemn Kristin or raise her up. And I don't know if Kristin is going to die of old age, not die, be killed, or what. It is so strange, to use the translator's favorite adjective. Really, how many books have you read where soo close to finishing you're still in suspense on the fate of the eponymous character? Christ. Neither do I know what judgment I am going to render on the book! FUCK! This morning part of the psychological toll it was taking on me was that I was concluding "this book is about nothing beyond one made-up character." That is, that there is no "real" lesson. Kristin was a young girl when the book began and through at least 1,000 pages it has been about that one made-up girl's life experiences. If the book ends with Kristin simply dying of old age...what was the point? "If." I still don't know. DAMN it.
One thing I know: that damned sculptor chose right when he depicted Kristin walking! She walks more than anybody else in the fucking whole history of the earth. The lesson I am taking from this book after 1,000 of 1,043 pages is: don't get involved with a Norwegian girl.
One thing I know: that damned sculptor chose right when he depicted Kristin walking! She walks more than anybody else in the fucking whole history of the earth. The lesson I am taking from this book after 1,000 of 1,043 pages is: don't get involved with a Norwegian girl.
