Category — Feminist book

(Norwegian title: Før du sovner.) Before You Sleep was originally written in Norwegian. While it was not viewed as controversial in Norway, American reviewers have regarded it as a “detailed and sexually frank novel.” Such labels aside, Before You Sleep is a great and strong story of a Norwegian family, Blom, with strong and also somewhat eccentric women, that spans several generations. The story moves from Oslo to Brooklyn, both places well known to the author.

The story is complicated. It is told, over time, from the mouth of one of the key characters in the book, Karin.
It is about relations inside and out of the family, about motherhood, marriage, emotions, love, and even infidelity.

Before You Sleep is an exceptional debut book. It is very well worth reading. Linn Ullman tells her story in a way that makes the characters come alive, and make you sympathize with their strange actions and understand their emotions.

“Of this autumns literary output, novelist Linn Ullmann is the wickedest and wittiest, and because she writes with a silent sincerity and merges all this with wit, intelligence and a generous picture of human beings, the novel is a real pleasure to read.”

CECILIE WINGER,
FÆDRELANDSVENNEN (Norway)

“Before You Sleep is infernally well written. The debutante, Linn Ullmann, has, from page one, found her own form and language, consistent in style until the end.”

GT (Sweden)

(Translated by Arthur G. Chater.New : York: Knopf, 1936. New translation by Tiina Nanally.) (Norwegian title: Fortællingen om Viga-Ljot og Vigdis. Christiania (Oslo): Aschehoug, 1909.)

Set in Norway and Iceland at the beginning of the eleventh century, Gunnar’s Daughter is the story of the beautiful, spoiled Vigdis Gunnarsdatter, who is casually raped by the man she had wanted to love.

A woman of courage and intelligence, Vigdis is toughened by adversity. Alone she raises the child conceived in violence, repeatedly defending her autonomy in a world governed by men. Alone she rebuilds her life and restores her family’s honor, until an unrelenting social code propels her to take the action that again destroys her happiness.

More than a historical romance, Gunnar’s Daughter depicts characters driven by passion and vengefulness, themes as familiar in Undset’s own time - and in ours - as they were in the Saga Age. A strong, unsentimental book by Undset.