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Publication
Peter Owen Publishers (2009), Paperback, 200 pages
Description
A new edition of what is commonly seen as the legendary Norwegian writer's masterpiece, this story tells the tale of Siss and Unn, two friends who have only spent one evening in each other's company. But so profound is this evening between them that when Unn inexplicably disappears, Siss's world is shattered. Siss's struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn's fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the Ice Palace are described in prose of a lyrical economy that ranks among the most memorable achievements of modern literature.
User reviews
LibraryThing member WoodsieGirl
This is a strange, beautiful novel. It concerns two young girls, Siss and Unn, who have developed an intense, inexplicable bond. Unn wants to confess something to Siss, but Siss loses her nerve and runs away. Rejected, Unn can’t face seeing Siss at school the next day, so plays truant and goes to
There is little further action in the book after this point. The focus is not on narrative progression, but on Siss’ confused feelings of guilt and loyalty to her friend. The prose is utterly beautiful throughout. The description of Unn’s fatal exploration of the ice palace is among the most haunting pieces of writing I have ever read. I don’t think I’ve ever read any other Norwegian fiction, so this may be a sweeping generalisation on my part, but it seemed to me that a novel like this could only have come out of a place like Norway. It is impossible to imagine this novel being written while the author basked in bright sunshine. The cold and the endless dark are as central to the book as Siss and Unn themselves.
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explore the “ice palace” – a structure formed by the freezing waterfall. Unn never returns.There is little further action in the book after this point. The focus is not on narrative progression, but on Siss’ confused feelings of guilt and loyalty to her friend. The prose is utterly beautiful throughout. The description of Unn’s fatal exploration of the ice palace is among the most haunting pieces of writing I have ever read. I don’t think I’ve ever read any other Norwegian fiction, so this may be a sweeping generalisation on my part, but it seemed to me that a novel like this could only have come out of a place like Norway. It is impossible to imagine this novel being written while the author basked in bright sunshine. The cold and the endless dark are as central to the book as Siss and Unn themselves.
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LibraryThing member Widsith
A wonderfully cathartic read for anyone who, like me, has been forced to sit through Frozen one too many times. Like a bleak Scandi rewrite, this also features a lonely girl who makes her way to a magical palace of ice in the wilderness, except that here, instead of belting out a jaunty
Anyway, the two girls herein, Anna and Els—er, I mean Siss and Unn—are not sisters, but rather friends in a remote community in rural Norway. In fact they have only just met, but in Vesaas's crystalline, delicate prose their relationship is charged from the very first with intense unspoken meaning. Siss can feel Unn's gaze on her in the schoolroom as a ‘sweet tingling in her body’; when they go to Unn's house, Unn locks the door and makes them both undress. There is something sexual about their relationship, but it is the ununderstood sexuality of one of Freud's case studies – for the girls are only eleven years old. Unn has a terrible secret, one which (she thinks) means she will not go to heaven.
The ice palace of the title is a natural structure that has built up around a half-frozen waterfall in the woods outside the village. The passages describing Unn's exploration of this eerie place are among the most extraordinary and poetic in the book – indeed the poetry so weighs on the prose that eventually one chapter is completely overtaken:
As we stand the snow falls thicker.
Your sleeve turns white.
My sleeve turns white.
They move between us like
snow-covered bridges.
Tarjei Vesaas is sometimes described as a modernist, but at moments in this novel – which is as stark and bare as a tree in midwinter – he seems more like a symbolist. Small elements of the natural world are freighted with enormous coded significance, and much is left unsaid: we never find out what Unn's great secret was, nor is the girls' mutual attraction ever really explained. Yet the prose itself is appealingly clear and straightforward, an effect that must have been heightened in the original by the fact that Vesaas wrote, unusually, in Nynorsk, instead of the traditional literary dialect of Bokmål. The contemporary English translation from Elizabeth Rokkan reads entirely naturally, I thought, and gives you a very clear idea of why Vesaas is considered such a giant of Norwegian letters.
Unn never comes back from her trip to the ice palace, and for Siss it becomes a symbol of the danger and awe of the frightening natural world – a symbol to which she knows she must eventually journey herself. What follows is by turns mysterious and touching, as Vesaas finds his own way to explain – ironically – how to ‘let it go’, but this time completely unburdened by clichés, heavy-handedness, or musical snowmen.
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power-ballad, she succumbs satisfyingly to hypothermia. What's that, Elsa? Oh, the cold does bother you, after all? Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you stripped down to a minidress and started harmonising.Anyway, the two girls herein, Anna and Els—er, I mean Siss and Unn—are not sisters, but rather friends in a remote community in rural Norway. In fact they have only just met, but in Vesaas's crystalline, delicate prose their relationship is charged from the very first with intense unspoken meaning. Siss can feel Unn's gaze on her in the schoolroom as a ‘sweet tingling in her body’; when they go to Unn's house, Unn locks the door and makes them both undress. There is something sexual about their relationship, but it is the ununderstood sexuality of one of Freud's case studies – for the girls are only eleven years old. Unn has a terrible secret, one which (she thinks) means she will not go to heaven.
The ice palace of the title is a natural structure that has built up around a half-frozen waterfall in the woods outside the village. The passages describing Unn's exploration of this eerie place are among the most extraordinary and poetic in the book – indeed the poetry so weighs on the prose that eventually one chapter is completely overtaken:
As we stand the snow falls thicker.
Your sleeve turns white.
My sleeve turns white.
They move between us like
snow-covered bridges.
Tarjei Vesaas is sometimes described as a modernist, but at moments in this novel – which is as stark and bare as a tree in midwinter – he seems more like a symbolist. Small elements of the natural world are freighted with enormous coded significance, and much is left unsaid: we never find out what Unn's great secret was, nor is the girls' mutual attraction ever really explained. Yet the prose itself is appealingly clear and straightforward, an effect that must have been heightened in the original by the fact that Vesaas wrote, unusually, in Nynorsk, instead of the traditional literary dialect of Bokmål. The contemporary English translation from Elizabeth Rokkan reads entirely naturally, I thought, and gives you a very clear idea of why Vesaas is considered such a giant of Norwegian letters.
Unn never comes back from her trip to the ice palace, and for Siss it becomes a symbol of the danger and awe of the frightening natural world – a symbol to which she knows she must eventually journey herself. What follows is by turns mysterious and touching, as Vesaas finds his own way to explain – ironically – how to ‘let it go’, but this time completely unburdened by clichés, heavy-handedness, or musical snowmen.
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LibraryThing member Hermias
This* is a novel about secrecy. Not even eleven year old Siss knows why she exposes herself cold and darkness to meet Unn, the new girl in school with the tragic past. Neither does anyone know where Unn has gone after roaming through the frozen waterfall called the ice palace. Yet, Siss refuses to
In its shortness, it combines a whole bunch of different styles, ranging from discreet prose in the animating depiction of the ice palace over the fragments of Siss' vow of never-ending remembrance to an allegorical poem called "Dream of Snow-Covered Bridges".
It is an artful move to chose two girls on the eve adolescence to be the protagonists as they ensure the novel's seriousness not despite but because their short life experience. I have hardly read a book more successful in earnestly bringing out two children's confusion and mysterious intimacy, telling its story close to main characters and close to the boundaries of prose and poetry.
* I am referring to the Norwegian version, "carefully" revised and adapted to modern Nynorsk by Vesaas' daughter Guri Vesaas.
Tarjei Vesaas: Is-slottet, Oslo: Gyldendal, 2007.
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tell anyone what the two girls talked about the day before Unn disappeared.In its shortness, it combines a whole bunch of different styles, ranging from discreet prose in the animating depiction of the ice palace over the fragments of Siss' vow of never-ending remembrance to an allegorical poem called "Dream of Snow-Covered Bridges".
It is an artful move to chose two girls on the eve adolescence to be the protagonists as they ensure the novel's seriousness not despite but because their short life experience. I have hardly read a book more successful in earnestly bringing out two children's confusion and mysterious intimacy, telling its story close to main characters and close to the boundaries of prose and poetry.
* I am referring to the Norwegian version, "carefully" revised and adapted to modern Nynorsk by Vesaas' daughter Guri Vesaas.
Tarjei Vesaas: Is-slottet, Oslo: Gyldendal, 2007.
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LibraryThing member Luli81
“Promise in deepest snow from Siss to Unn:
I promise to think about no one but you.”
Sometimes, only a gleaming glance is enough.
Siss and Unn, two eleven-year old girls living in an isolated, rural community somewhere in Scandinavia, need only a single evening together to forge an uncommon
When four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass, shine into each other, words become redundant. A disturbing meeting, charged with powerful silences and unsaid secrets, unites the girls beyond humane nature in an unbreakable bond, frozen in time.
There is nothing childlike in this deceivingly simple tale, nothing soft or tender. The spell-binding description of a perpetually glacial scenery, where twigs weep iced drops and icicles melt in pools of tears, is as distressingly beautiful as it is ruthless and brutally cold, devoid of life.
The concise, lyrical narrative evokes the Japanese haiku style, where the misleading simplicity of the text is in fact overflowing with symbolism and metaphors worthy of close reading, making of this brief novel a gem in form of a prose poem.
It is precisely in this sombre setting, full of darkness lurking in recondite corners, reinforced with this sharp writing style, where the main character of the novel is presented: The eerie giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall up in the lake, called The Ice Palace. Either sanctuary or mausoleum, it arises as the eternally snow covered bridge that defies death, guilt and angst, linking Siss and Unn forever. There’s only one thing to ask in exchange for this everlasting token of friendship: A promise. Siss must never forget.
The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace.
This is a sublime piece of art which masterfully portrays the intensity of new discovered feelings peaking at an early age and the necessity to merge the opposing forces involved in the process of growing up to become a whole being, and also to accept emptiness and loss as facets of life, even if that means getting rid of part of oneself.
The shattered ice might melt and cease to be, but the power of memory can bring back frozen images of icicles and shiny drops of water dancing together in the flood of light that the dilated pupil caught in a blinding and timeless moment.
“‘It’s not right for you to go on as you as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person.’Don’t answer. It’s not meant to be answered. But it’s like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.”
I promise to think about no one but you.”
Sometimes, only a gleaming glance is enough.
Siss and Unn, two eleven-year old girls living in an isolated, rural community somewhere in Scandinavia, need only a single evening together to forge an uncommon
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friendship that will change their lives irreparably. When four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass, shine into each other, words become redundant. A disturbing meeting, charged with powerful silences and unsaid secrets, unites the girls beyond humane nature in an unbreakable bond, frozen in time.
There is nothing childlike in this deceivingly simple tale, nothing soft or tender. The spell-binding description of a perpetually glacial scenery, where twigs weep iced drops and icicles melt in pools of tears, is as distressingly beautiful as it is ruthless and brutally cold, devoid of life.
The concise, lyrical narrative evokes the Japanese haiku style, where the misleading simplicity of the text is in fact overflowing with symbolism and metaphors worthy of close reading, making of this brief novel a gem in form of a prose poem.
It is precisely in this sombre setting, full of darkness lurking in recondite corners, reinforced with this sharp writing style, where the main character of the novel is presented: The eerie giant structure formed by a frozen waterfall up in the lake, called The Ice Palace. Either sanctuary or mausoleum, it arises as the eternally snow covered bridge that defies death, guilt and angst, linking Siss and Unn forever. There’s only one thing to ask in exchange for this everlasting token of friendship: A promise. Siss must never forget.
The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace.
This is a sublime piece of art which masterfully portrays the intensity of new discovered feelings peaking at an early age and the necessity to merge the opposing forces involved in the process of growing up to become a whole being, and also to accept emptiness and loss as facets of life, even if that means getting rid of part of oneself.
The shattered ice might melt and cease to be, but the power of memory can bring back frozen images of icicles and shiny drops of water dancing together in the flood of light that the dilated pupil caught in a blinding and timeless moment.
“‘It’s not right for you to go on as you as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person.’Don’t answer. It’s not meant to be answered. But it’s like the gleaming of stars in a well. And no explanation.”
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LibraryThing member Stig_Brantley
A miniature psychological bildungsroman. It is very sparse and beautiful, taking place in a frozen landscape...somewhere that could be anywhere. The Scandanavian names of the two main characters are the only things which associate the book with a certain place (well, that and the fact that it was
It's told from the point of view of an 11 year old girl, detailing the way she deals with a tragedy.
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translated from Norweigan). In the middle of the book, cars and telephones are brought up briefly. Otherwise it would feel timeless as well.It's told from the point of view of an 11 year old girl, detailing the way she deals with a tragedy.
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LibraryThing member eglinton
Cold theme and cold treatment; a spectral, disembodied story. Or mood piece rather, as nothing actually happens beyond the initial events, other than some adolescent intensity of feeling, floating but lacking the mystery or perhaps empathic charge a reader would need. Youngster disappears, winter
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landscape spreads: that's it. At best perhaps this might produce some of the moody impact and chilly grace of a formal ballet, but - in Vesaas' short book - not for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member auntmarge64
This Norwegian novel, written in 1963, is a timeless, intense, beautiful little gem about friendship, obsession, and the call of the ice. I couldn't put it down. When I rate a book I start by assuming it will be 5 stars and then mark it down as it goes along, but all the way through this I kept
Two eleven-year old girls meet at their rural school and are immediately attracted towards friendship. Unn, who has recently moved here after her mother's death and been taken in by an elderly aunt, finally makes a move and invites Siss to visit her at home. Something Unn wants to reveal to Siss, but doesn't say out loud that first evening, scares Siss into leaving fairly quickly, but each girl plans that the next visit will bring them closer. Instead, Unn disappears after she leaves for school the next day.
The reader is quickly shown what has happened to her, but the townspeople struggle to find her in the cold and ice for days. For Siss, Unn's disappearance is a sea change. She can't let go of the immediate attachment she felt or accept that Unn may be dead, and she separates herself from her social group, among whom she had long been leader, in a promise she believes will see Unn return. The tensions of how much Siss and the town will discover about Unn's fate, and of whether Siss will be able to move on emotionally, provides the power of the book, along with the description of what has actually happened to Unn, which is an amazing chapter on it's own.
Highly, highly recommended.
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thinking, "oh, wow, this really is a perfect little book". It's how I felt after reading "The Color Purple" years ago.Two eleven-year old girls meet at their rural school and are immediately attracted towards friendship. Unn, who has recently moved here after her mother's death and been taken in by an elderly aunt, finally makes a move and invites Siss to visit her at home. Something Unn wants to reveal to Siss, but doesn't say out loud that first evening, scares Siss into leaving fairly quickly, but each girl plans that the next visit will bring them closer. Instead, Unn disappears after she leaves for school the next day.
The reader is quickly shown what has happened to her, but the townspeople struggle to find her in the cold and ice for days. For Siss, Unn's disappearance is a sea change. She can't let go of the immediate attachment she felt or accept that Unn may be dead, and she separates herself from her social group, among whom she had long been leader, in a promise she believes will see Unn return. The tensions of how much Siss and the town will discover about Unn's fate, and of whether Siss will be able to move on emotionally, provides the power of the book, along with the description of what has actually happened to Unn, which is an amazing chapter on it's own.
Highly, highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member jveezer
I had never heard of Tarjei Vesaas before seeing him on the short list for the first annual Daphne Award for the best books of 50 years ago. This award was conceived by Jessa Crispin of Bookslut to go back and possibly correct the often politicized and near-sightedness of book awards by applying
Palace of Ice, or Is-slottet in Nynorsk, is an amazing tale of an short term, intense friendship between two young girls that ends with the disappearance of one of them. Siss is left to adjust to the loss of Unn over the long Norwegian winter and it is apparent that this will be something that will affect her for the rest of her life. Vesaas writes in simple, beautiful language but that simplicity does not affect his ability to describe the emotions and events that mark that tragic winter. His descriptions of the countryside and weather, as well as the huge edifice of ice that builds up below the local waterfall in the severe cold, is gripping. This is the Palace of Ice from which the novel gets its name.
The chapter in which Unn is lost is perhaps the most terrifying bit of prose I have ever read, even though I knew what was coming. Maybe it is because my closest brushes with death have been ones in which ice and snow have figured heavily. If ever there was a writer that could convey the dangerous and tempting beauty of nature, Vesaas would be my candidate.
Thanks to Jessa Crispin for turning me on to another masterpiece of world literature that I might not have come across otherwise.
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the lens of 5 decades and a more worldwide perspective than national awards like the U.S.A.’s National Book Award (John Updike’s The Centaur won for best fiction of 1963). Widely considered to be Norway’s top writer of the 20-th century and considered for the Nobel Prize three times, Vesaas is well worth the read.Palace of Ice, or Is-slottet in Nynorsk, is an amazing tale of an short term, intense friendship between two young girls that ends with the disappearance of one of them. Siss is left to adjust to the loss of Unn over the long Norwegian winter and it is apparent that this will be something that will affect her for the rest of her life. Vesaas writes in simple, beautiful language but that simplicity does not affect his ability to describe the emotions and events that mark that tragic winter. His descriptions of the countryside and weather, as well as the huge edifice of ice that builds up below the local waterfall in the severe cold, is gripping. This is the Palace of Ice from which the novel gets its name.
The chapter in which Unn is lost is perhaps the most terrifying bit of prose I have ever read, even though I knew what was coming. Maybe it is because my closest brushes with death have been ones in which ice and snow have figured heavily. If ever there was a writer that could convey the dangerous and tempting beauty of nature, Vesaas would be my candidate.
Thanks to Jessa Crispin for turning me on to another masterpiece of world literature that I might not have come across otherwise.
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LibraryThing member rrainer
This is another book that I'm not sure how to talk about, as though I'm missing the vocabulary to express what it made me think and how it made me feel. There's a fascinating intensity throughout the whole thing, whether it was coming from the young girls or from the ice palace itself or the
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tension in the community after what happened. (I also have an intense fear of iceburgs which, while not directly relevant, almost certainly feed into the tension I was feeling). Ultimately, it made me think about how relationships and other people are hard to understand when we're young, but that's also when we're at our most fearless. Honestly, I just can't stop thinking about it. Show Less
LibraryThing member bolgai
Had this elegant short novel not been assigned I most likely wouldn't have finished it, but now that I have read it I'm glad that setting it aside wasn't an option. Vesaas writing style is almost painfully spare, which takes some getting used to, yet once I got into it I kept marveling at the
The story itself is rather simple: it follows a girl on the cusp of adolescence grieving the disappearance of a new friend, going through disbelief, acceptance and finally release. It's the elegance of execution and the profound insight into the characters that sets this novel apart. Vessas' children seem innocent and straightforward, and yet their problems are complex and far-reaching. The adults are an interesting combination of contradictions: on one hand they give children plenty of freedom to get through problems on their own and on the other hand it's clear just how concerned they are about the youngsters' welfare. One very special character I didn't expect was nature: Vesaas wove it into the plot so much that eventually the ice gripping the small village feels almost alive, it is certainly just as animated as any of the human characters.
I really want to talk about the details but for the sake of not spoiling the novel I will refrain. Just go get it and read it. It's worth every penny.
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beauty of it. It's as if he set out to write a novel as stark as Norwegian winter itself, all sharp lines and few colors, intense in its subdued grace, frozen in place but ready for the spring thaw. It's as if he knew that if he gave the readers just enough they would create in their minds a world that would meld with the bare bones of the story and they would feel a part of it. The story itself is rather simple: it follows a girl on the cusp of adolescence grieving the disappearance of a new friend, going through disbelief, acceptance and finally release. It's the elegance of execution and the profound insight into the characters that sets this novel apart. Vessas' children seem innocent and straightforward, and yet their problems are complex and far-reaching. The adults are an interesting combination of contradictions: on one hand they give children plenty of freedom to get through problems on their own and on the other hand it's clear just how concerned they are about the youngsters' welfare. One very special character I didn't expect was nature: Vesaas wove it into the plot so much that eventually the ice gripping the small village feels almost alive, it is certainly just as animated as any of the human characters.
I really want to talk about the details but for the sake of not spoiling the novel I will refrain. Just go get it and read it. It's worth every penny.
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LibraryThing member MurphyWaggoner
"After a while Siss began to feel Unn's eyes on her in class.... Siss felt it as a peculiar tingling in her body. She liked it so much she scarcely bothered to hide it. She pretended not to notice, but felt herself to be enmeshed in something strange and pleasant."
from "The Ice Palace" by Tarjai
The story is simple: Siss is a popular 11-year-old girl. A new girl, Unn, sits by herself at the edge of the playground every day. Despite their differences, they are drawn to each other. Their first meeting is also their last. Afterward, Siss struggles to keep an impossible promise. She turns a corner in her life to find the connection between what she believes and what she feels.
The book is written with simple prose akin to poetry to describe the sensual awakening of a young girl. The presence of the ice palace kept me glued to the page. This beautiful and terrifying natural sculpture was yet another character in the book.
from "The Ice Palace" by Tarjai
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VesaasThe story is simple: Siss is a popular 11-year-old girl. A new girl, Unn, sits by herself at the edge of the playground every day. Despite their differences, they are drawn to each other. Their first meeting is also their last. Afterward, Siss struggles to keep an impossible promise. She turns a corner in her life to find the connection between what she believes and what she feels.
The book is written with simple prose akin to poetry to describe the sensual awakening of a young girl. The presence of the ice palace kept me glued to the page. This beautiful and terrifying natural sculpture was yet another character in the book.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
The Ice Palace is the story of two young girls on the brink of friendship. Unn has recently moved to a cold, rural Norwegian town to live with her Auntie after the death of her mother. There she meets Siss and after months of seeing each other at school, Unn finally invites Siss over to her house.
The backdrop of this book is the enormous, beautiful, and dangerous Ice Palace, a large waterfall that has frozen over during the cold, dark winter. The descriptions of the Ice Palace are amazingly beautiful and frame the entire book.
Again, I find myself loving a Scandinavian novel with characters and plot that are somehow both highly dramatic and subtle, set against a background of a harsh climate that is an accepted part of the characters' lives, but feels foreign, beautiful, and a bit scary to me.
I read Vesaas's The Birds earlier this year and loved this just as much.
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They are on the brink of friendship, about to tell each other secrets and excited to get to know each other, when Unn disappears. Siss is devastated by her disappearance and makes a promise to herself to never pass a day, or even a moment, not thinking of Unn. Her reaction worries her parents and her friends as she withdraws from her community. The backdrop of this book is the enormous, beautiful, and dangerous Ice Palace, a large waterfall that has frozen over during the cold, dark winter. The descriptions of the Ice Palace are amazingly beautiful and frame the entire book.
Again, I find myself loving a Scandinavian novel with characters and plot that are somehow both highly dramatic and subtle, set against a background of a harsh climate that is an accepted part of the characters' lives, but feels foreign, beautiful, and a bit scary to me.
I read Vesaas's The Birds earlier this year and loved this just as much.
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LibraryThing member JimElkins
A Kind of Complexity not Known to Postmodernism
Vesaas's "Ice Palace," published in 1963 and translated in 1993, 23 years after Vesaas's death, has been the subject of a number of ecstatic reviews. Because it seems so remote in time and place it has attracted some inaccurate stereotypes: one
Although Vesaas was a modernist, his modernism was of the order of his contemprary Halldor Laxness: lmost nothing reveals the century, or even the country. Its plot could be told in three or four sentences. It is about the feelings of an 11-year-old girl over the course of a winter. Her bond with another girl is mirrored by the changing landscape, which probably occupies more than half the book. There are no linguistic pyrotechnics, no clever emplotments, no complex interior monologues, no irony, no satire, no carefully wrought conversations, nothing witty, no jokes or humor, no virtuoso set pieces, no play with genres or styles, no summaries, no flashbacks, no anticipations of the future.
From a postmodern perspective that would pretty much make complexity impossible. The complexity here comes from the way that simple thoughts, barely articulated, are mirrored by the landscape, which is itself simply but carefully observed. The main character has very few thoughts in the course of the novel, but the landscape in which she lives responds slowly, repeatedly, and at length,weaving her few thoughts and moods into water, snow, trees, and ice. This is the kind of book that makes much of the current literary scene seem very small.
Vesaas's "Ice Palace," published in 1963 and translated in 1993, 23 years after Vesaas's death, has been the subject of a number of ecstatic reviews. Because it seems so remote in time and place it has attracted some inaccurate stereotypes: one
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reviewer said Vesaas lived in a remote area of northern Norway (he was born in a small town in Telemark, and when he married he moved a few miles down the road), and another said the book takes place on a fjord (it is set near a lake). It is "simple," "subtle," "strong," "extraordinary" (all Doris Lessings's words, online at the Independent), "startlingly beautiful" (twice, in a review on theliterarysisters), "gorgeous," and "harrowing" (Shani Boianjiu on npr.org).Although Vesaas was a modernist, his modernism was of the order of his contemprary Halldor Laxness: lmost nothing reveals the century, or even the country. Its plot could be told in three or four sentences. It is about the feelings of an 11-year-old girl over the course of a winter. Her bond with another girl is mirrored by the changing landscape, which probably occupies more than half the book. There are no linguistic pyrotechnics, no clever emplotments, no complex interior monologues, no irony, no satire, no carefully wrought conversations, nothing witty, no jokes or humor, no virtuoso set pieces, no play with genres or styles, no summaries, no flashbacks, no anticipations of the future.
From a postmodern perspective that would pretty much make complexity impossible. The complexity here comes from the way that simple thoughts, barely articulated, are mirrored by the landscape, which is itself simply but carefully observed. The main character has very few thoughts in the course of the novel, but the landscape in which she lives responds slowly, repeatedly, and at length,weaving her few thoughts and moods into water, snow, trees, and ice. This is the kind of book that makes much of the current literary scene seem very small.
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LibraryThing member boredgames
Fractals, creepy, glacial, brilliant.
LibraryThing member stuart10er
Two young girls in a coming-of-age novel set in rural Norway. The two girls are just beginning a great friendship and one of them decides to skip school and visits a frozen waterfall, or ice palace, and goes exploring in it with predictable consequences. However, the book then explores the other
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girl's reaction to this and how she mourns and puts her life back on track. Lovely writing and moving. Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This is one of my favorite reads of the year. "a world of icy chill and unspoken foreboding". (Amazon review)
A new girl, Unn, has arrived in an isolated northern town to live with a relative. She is viewed with suspicion by most of her schoolmates. One girl, Siss, reaches clumsily out to her.
The
A new girl, Unn, has arrived in an isolated northern town to live with a relative. She is viewed with suspicion by most of her schoolmates. One girl, Siss, reaches clumsily out to her.
The
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language is poetic, with beautiful imagery. Vesaas creates a world of cold beauty and isolation. I will never forget the evocation of being inside the "ice palace"--the shimmery lights beckoning Unn further and further in. Show Less
LibraryThing member Dreesie
A fascinating and spare short novel that looks at the friendship of 2 11-year-old girls. Classmates who have spent 1 evening together, after which one of them disappears. Siss is left to struggle with depression and sadness, after the excitement and intensity of finding a best friend. Yet no one
Fascinating, intense, painful, and a very fast read.
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realizes how close they were (or were to be, in both their minds).Fascinating, intense, painful, and a very fast read.
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LibraryThing member Laine-Cunningham
A beautiful fable for adults. This work has it all: a central character you really care about, descriptions of the setting and places she visits that come alive with meaning, and questions over not only whether she will survive this terrible winter but what will happen to her friend in the end.
The
At the end, the heart of the book blooms. This is the girl's heart, her way of looking at the world, and the shift that occurs for her because of what has happened to her friend and her friend's mother. Truly a lovely, almost achingly beautiful work. If I could give this six stars, I would.
The
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images drawn by the author were fantastical yet always stayed embedded in what might really occur. The danger was real while being heightened by her youthful outlook both because children can fear things they don't understand and because they ignore risks adults know are extreme. At the end, the heart of the book blooms. This is the girl's heart, her way of looking at the world, and the shift that occurs for her because of what has happened to her friend and her friend's mother. Truly a lovely, almost achingly beautiful work. If I could give this six stars, I would.
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LibraryThing member Petroglyph
[The ice palace] is a quiet little book that carefully but in unadorned language tells the straightforward story of the sudden friendship between Siss and Unn, two eleven-year-old girls in a remote Norwegian village. It also tells the story of the ice and the river, which create a mesmerising kind
Vesaas takes the straightforward approach to all this, taking care to err on the side of saying too little. Lyrical passages are inserted as precision bombs, carefully timed and impacting precisely the right spot. The whole book, while short, is wonderfully pregnant with what remains unsaid.
(Aside: speaking as a language enthusiast, I particularly enjoyed the dialogues in this book, brief though they may be, precisely because they are so austere. Siss' interactions with her parents, and indeed the majority of the dialogues in this book felt quintessentially Scandinavian -- I could taste the non-English directness and the Norwegian syntax on the dialogue: "No, you mustn't"; "Did you hurt yourself? No, not a bit"; "It was fun going home with you". This, too, I believe is a result of Vesaas’ sparseness with words and his inclination to the unsaid.)
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of beauty before they're blotted out by the snow. And finally, it tells the story of a promise and a departure, marks of, if not a friendship, then a growing-up experience. Vesaas takes the straightforward approach to all this, taking care to err on the side of saying too little. Lyrical passages are inserted as precision bombs, carefully timed and impacting precisely the right spot. The whole book, while short, is wonderfully pregnant with what remains unsaid.
(Aside: speaking as a language enthusiast, I particularly enjoyed the dialogues in this book, brief though they may be, precisely because they are so austere. Siss' interactions with her parents, and indeed the majority of the dialogues in this book felt quintessentially Scandinavian -- I could taste the non-English directness and the Norwegian syntax on the dialogue: "No, you mustn't"; "Did you hurt yourself? No, not a bit"; "It was fun going home with you". This, too, I believe is a result of Vesaas’ sparseness with words and his inclination to the unsaid.)
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LibraryThing member 37143Birnbaum
This was a very egnimatic book. the reader was never absolutely sure what happened. It seemed too incredible what as a reader, you thought happened. Beautifuly written, I thought. Eerie.
Awards
Nordisk Råds litteraturpris (Nominee — 1964)
Language
Original publication date
1963 (original Norwegian)
Physical description
200 p.; 4.76 x 0.49 inches
ISBN
0720613299 / 9780720613292