A Blessed Child

By Linn Ullmann

Book Overview

A captivating story of sisterhood and of the inescapable chords of childhood memory.

"A hauntingly beautiful novel of family ties, A Blessed Child takes on what it means to be old, what it means to have loved selfishly, deeply and -- equally - to no longer love." - A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress's Daughter

Every summer Isak L venstad gathers his three daughters by different wives to the windswept Baltic island of Hammars . Here Erika, Laura, and Molly know, if only for the season, what it is to be a family, and here, in the society of children, each undergoes the rites of growing up. Though many alliances form and dissolve, none compares to Erika's bond with the rebellious misfit Ragnar, the intensity of which makes them inseparable. But when they reach the age of fourteen and their relationship threatens to relegate Erika to Ragnar's outcast state, she suddenly turns away--a common enough teenage betrayal that nonetheless precipitates an incident of such senseless cruelty as to forever alter Isak's family.

Twenty-five years later, returning to Hammars to see their father--now eighty, a bereaved widower, and in year-round exile there--the three women confront, finally, the specter of that awful summer, the mark of which each has since carried.

Bold and starkly beautiful, A Blessed Child is a haunting parable of innocence lost.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030727781X
• ISBN13: 9780307277817
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

"A Blessed Child" -- Gifted story from a gifted storyteller

"A Blessed Child" is an almost Rashomon kind of story, revolving around the perspectives of three sisters who return to a remote Swedish island to be with their aged father for what they believe may be their last time with him. Each daughter has a different mother, and each daughter experiences her own path to maturity in a different way. Author Ullmann weaves their stories together in a completely believeable way, making each's journey fascinating in itself. There is a seminal event which they all witness in unique ways, and deal with in equally unique ways. A satisfying book, well worth spending time with. The author makes the winter weather and the distant locale into "characters" in the story, giving a real feel for the remoteness and frigidity of a tiny Swedish island as the story builds compellingly to a surprising climax. One word about the translation, by a woman curiously named Death: it's first rate, colloquial and symbolic.