A Blessed Child - by Linn Ullmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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 Lövenstad gathers his three daughters by different wives to the windswept Baltic island of Hammarsö. 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 Hammarsö 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.

Review Quotes

"Ullmann's sentences...are a pleasure to read and her deft modern sensibility is winning."--The New York Times Book Review"Linn Ullmann's A Blessed Child is a like a fine, long evening of light. There are all sorts of colors on the horizon, and even when the darkness becomes visible, there is still a place to turn to. This is a book for fathers and daughters, and for anyone who's beguiled by the country of family. The language is clear and runs deep. The story is profound and touching. Together, they announce another great story telling feat by Linn Ullmann. She reminds me of Berger, of Aciman, of Toibin: no greater praise."--Colum McCann, author of Zoli: A Novel"A world-famous octogenarian father approaching death, three daughters, each of a different mother, a windswept island in the Baltic: of these, of fragments of recollection, and of a childhood summer when an event of unimaginable cruelty changed everything, Linn Ullmann has woven a memory novel of haunting power and grace."--Honor Moore, author of The Bishop's Daughter"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. Linn Ullmann has crafted an inescapably evocative novel about memory, about childhood, about the movement of life, the nature of grief and the enormous mystery of love."--A.M. Homes, author of The Mistress's Daughter"A Blessed Child is a tour de force of, for want of a better way of putting it, narrative memory. In this nuanced and subtle and smart novel, the past and its tragedies are supervening over the present and its tragedies in wait, and even the living can seem to inhabit a kind of timeless island of familial memory. The folding of time upon time upon time, however complexly difficult for the writer to achieve, creates an effect that is sure and beautiful. This is a novel about how people think, and about the things we think, and about how, finally, the manner and content of our thoughts may very well be pretty much who we are."--Donald Antrim, author of The Afterlife: A Memoir"A novel of stark beauty that leaves moral issues tantalizingly open."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Linn Ullmann is a graduate of New York University, where she studied English literature and began work on a Ph.D. She returned to her native Oslo in 1990 to pursue a career in journalism. A prominent literary critic, she also writes a column for Norway's leading morning newspaper. She lives in Oslo.