Sensible people might ask themselves why anyone would get the idea to read books from 26 different countries as a New Year’s Resolution. I have stated one of the reason before, that I had realized that almost all books I read were from either the United States or the United Kingdom. There are however few other reasons this has become my obsession. Here is one of them.
My boyfriend’s parents have a holiday house up on an island called Skogsøya in North of Norway that I have visited few times. They kept telling me that one of the most famous Norwegian author, Herbjørg Wassmo, had grown up that island.
I was a bit fascinated and one day decided that it was about time that I read one of her books. It ended up being a bookclub book that I read while on one of those visits to the island. The House with Blind Glass Window is a sad story about Tora, a young girl that grows up on the island. She is the daughter of a German soldier and a Norwegian woman after the WW2, something that was looked down on back in the days. She lives with her mother and abusive stepfather and the story is about her hard life. The book is beautifully written with a haunting nightmarish story that is bound to leave a mark on you.
I read the book while sitting in the living room looking over a small bay at a beautiful white mansion-like house called Breistrand. It stands out on the island and you can’t help but admire it and its location. I was later told by one of the locals that the rumor says that Herbjørg Wassmo is using that particular house as a model for the house with the blind glass window in her book. All of a sudden a location from a book stepped out of its pages and became more real. The roots of the book to this island were obvious. Ever since then I have been trying to read books that fit the location I am visiting. Either that they take place there or that the author is born in that place/country.
I visited Skogsøya again this winter and tried to repeat my success by reading Wassmo’s latest book Hundre år. Unfortunately, that book is the mere shadow of her previous work. It tells her own family history and goes into details about her own childhood and childhood abuse. It however never reached the same depth, felt a bit simplistic and at times written in a hurry. Hence it took me this long to write about it. I only give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Rather read her The House with Blind Glass Window which is a 5 star book!













