I didn't get this book. The book tells the life story of 3 women Hanna (grandmother of Anna, mother to Joanna), Joanna (other of Anna), and Anna living in Sweden.

What I liked about the book: Hanna's lifestory was very interesting. Born to a poor country family during the last half of 1800's, Hanna's life was a grim struggle. She was a servant for her uncle and cruel aunt. She was raped, then viewed as a whore by the town, and had a boy by the time she was 13 years old. Later she married the mill owner and had 4 more children. Despite all the hardships in her life, she just accepted it. There was no whining or crying. In fact she only cried in times of joy.

Joanna grew up in a city with more modern conveniences and felt embarrased by her mother's views and ways. She strongly resented her mother at times. However, despite different times and attitudes, all 3 women experienced similar difficulties, especially when it came to men.

What I didn't like:

Anna's story and part of Joanna's story was just blah... I thought the author was trying to make Anna should so deep and contemplative. Example: passionate love of her life cheats on her all the time, hurts her on purpose... Anna goes on and on about her husband's cold mother, Anna's distance, her cold Joanna's mother-in-law was, how she somehow inheriting problems from her mother and grandmother, etc... My assessment--your husband is a cheating scumbag that can't keep his pants zipped. I don't care how passionate you guys are, it's unhealthy.

I read this before a trip to Sweden, as one of the few Swedish novels I could find that wasn't a thriller. I wasn't extremely enthused about it, but I was very wrong. Beautifully written, this sweep through three women's lives is enlightening, moving, and educational. Granddaughter Anna, the semi-narrator, is the weakest story of the three but the richness of the Hanna (grandmother) and Johanna (daughter) stories more than make up for it. The suffering of women, indeed.

We get to follow threee generations of women through a story set in the woodland of sweden and gothenburg. Hanna is born in teh 1860s in the middle of the forest. Bearing a child early in her life she has a hard time finding employment and is deemed unmarriable. But it seems fate has happy plans for Hanna. Her life is a hard working one and a tough one. and you just get on with it, she says.
Her daughter Johanna is born in the forest in the 1930s but raised in Gothenburg. She is a completlety different women, a new generation who have not lived through a world war but seen the result of one. She works in a store and has what you could call the start of feministik values. Her daughter Anna, is politically involved and a strong minded woman. She tells a tale of lost and refound love, what values she stands up for in a relationship and how you decide on your life.

It's a story of three strong women who fight their own battles in their own time and still manage to pass on strenght to their daughters, and somehow cant recognise the strength for their own. Fredriksson is a wonderful writer, she paints a beautiful landscape and makes the characters come alive. A good book which got me thinking, who generations change and always will.

Bookclub July 2010

This tied in, unintentionally, with a recent retreat I attended. The story of three generations of women who live in Sweden, the earlier family at the border of Norway. It made me think a lot about how our family history affects our family story.

In it's original language the title was Anna, Hannah och Johanna. The title in English is a little misleading, as I read Hanna's story and she continued to have one boy after the other, I did find myself wondering when she was going to have time to have girls, especially as she marries a much older man.

In fact Hanna has only daughter, Johanna, the same name as the daughter her husband lost and was still grieving for, from his first marriage. Johanna would also have one daughter Anna, it she who begins to tell this story, she visits her mother in hospital, desperate to get answers to questions she's left it too late to ask.

She had lost her memory four years ago, then only a few months later her words had disappeared. She could see and hear, but could name neither objects nor people, so they lost all meaning.

Anna knows she is being demanding like a child, willing her mother to understand and respond, reprimanded by the care staff for upsetting her, for although she can't respond, she is vulnerable to the joys and anxieties of those around her and powerless to prevent the dreams that carry her each night back to the world of her childhood, that place her daughter is trying to penetrate.

Anna finds an old photograph of her grandmother Hanna and recognises similarities she's not been aware of, she remembers her briefly, and asking her mother:

'Why isn't she a proper Gran? Whose lap you can sit on and who tells stories?
And her mother's voice: 'She's old and tired, Anna. She's had enough of children. And there was never any time for stories in her life?'

The narrative then shifts back to Hanna's childhood, born in 1871, the eldest of a second group of children born, the first four died in the famine of the 1860's.

What the mother learned from the previous deaths was never to get fond of the new child. And to fear dirt and bad air.

The first half of the book is dedicated to Hanna and life and this is where the novel is at its best, immersed in the struggle of Hanna's early years, its tragic turning point and the situation she must accept as a result. Circumstances that will become buried deep, that nevertheless leave their impression on how she is in the world.

The mid-section zooms in on her grand-daughter Anna's adult life, charmed by a man with womanizing tendencies, but of a generation that refuses to accept an unbearable situation, one where women are able to be financially independent and greater decision makers.

Naturally I thought it was love driving me into Donald's arms. In my generation, we were obsessed with a longing for a grand passion. Hanna, you would've understood nothing whatsoever about love of that kind. In your day, love hadn't penetrated from the upper classes to the depths of peasantry.

Finally Johanna's life with her husband Arne, the good fortune that comes into her life, the trials that follow, of a different nature than her mother's, though not so far from her grandmother's though she probably knew nothing of that loss.

The second half of the book was less memorable for me, possibly because Hanna's story created such a strong sense of place and life in that era was full of dramatic events which underpinned the development of the characters. When the family moves to Goteborg, to the city and its ways, when the automobile arrives and travels shortens distances, life tended to become more uniform, less distinct.

Marianne Fredriksson in the opening pages of the novel reflects on something she learned at school, when Bible studies were still part of the curriculum, that the sins of the fathers are inflicted on children into the third and fourth generations. She felt that was terribly unjust, primitive and ridiculous, growing up, the first generation to be raised to be 'independent', those who were to take destiny into their own hands.

Then as knowledge developed and understanding of the importance of our social and psychological inheritance grew, those words began to acquire new meaning, and though there were none that spoke about the actions of mothers, here she found it to have more meaning.

We inherit patterns, behaviour and ways of reacting to a much greater extent than we like to admit. It has not been easy to adapt to; so much has been 'forgotten', disappearing into the subconscious when grandparents left farms and countryside where the family had lived for generations.

She goes on to say that ancient patterns are passed on from mothers to daughters, who have daughters... and that perhaps here too we might find some

explanation for why women have found it so difficult to stick up for themselves and make use of the rights an equal society has to offer.

Three generations of strong Swedish women, Hanna, Joanna, and Anna. It took some labor for me to reach the end of this book. I enjoy the pieces of history and culture of Sweden that I have absorbed, but suspect there is much that I missed.