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karinlib's review against another edition
4.0
Years ago I picked up the book[b:Silence in October|677378|Silence in October|Jens Christian Grøndahl|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328876369s/677378.jpg|663377] by Grondahl, and it had fit my mood perfectly while on vacation in October. I have read that book several times (always in October), so I was thrilled when a new Grondahl became available for my Kindle. Often I Am Happy is a short novel, and I read it in one sitting. Thoroughly enjoyed it. One interesting fact about this book. The author translated it into English. I believe that is why it flows so well.
rakoerose's review against another edition
4.0
The Reading Rush 2020: a genre that you’ve always wanted to read more of ☑
What a poignant and simultaneously devastating and uplifting description of grief this book is.
Now your husband is also dead, Anna. Your husband, our husband.
I feel like we often, collectively as a society, tend to forget how long life truly is. Social media makes it seem like if you haven’t reached every milestone of success by twenty-five, you’ve failed, when that’s really only the beginning! Life can be unexpected in its journey and you may end up somewhere completely outside of the imagination, as Ellinor does in this book. That doesn’t mean the life was “bad” or somehow lesser. It’s not often we see a protagonist who’s seventy. There’s so much to explore there.
I liked how this was written as though Ellinor were addressing her friend, almost an epistolary format, kind of memoiric and stream-of-consciousness style. It made me feel all the emotions much more intensely because I felt like the character was writing them to me, even though she wasn’t.
Love can be lost, and found, and broken. Love can be and love can be gone. I enjoyed seeing all the people Ellinor loved through her life and the impact the tiny moments had on her. It’s also a great reminder that love does not have to be strictly romantic - platonic, parental, so on so forth also exist. This was especially clear in the description of the drift between child and adult that happens (seemingly) to everyone. Seeing drifts like this breaks my heart, because I am incredibly close to my family. I can’t imagine my love for them becoming something I use past tense for, but in reading this I could understand why that could occur. It hurt but it was eye opening.
This was a fantastic experience and, for the length it is, I really do recommend it for everyone who wants to see what another person’s grief could look like.
What a poignant and simultaneously devastating and uplifting description of grief this book is.
Now your husband is also dead, Anna. Your husband, our husband.
I feel like we often, collectively as a society, tend to forget how long life truly is. Social media makes it seem like if you haven’t reached every milestone of success by twenty-five, you’ve failed, when that’s really only the beginning! Life can be unexpected in its journey and you may end up somewhere completely outside of the imagination, as Ellinor does in this book. That doesn’t mean the life was “bad” or somehow lesser. It’s not often we see a protagonist who’s seventy. There’s so much to explore there.
I liked how this was written as though Ellinor were addressing her friend, almost an epistolary format, kind of memoiric and stream-of-consciousness style. It made me feel all the emotions much more intensely because I felt like the character was writing them to me, even though she wasn’t.
Love can be lost, and found, and broken. Love can be and love can be gone. I enjoyed seeing all the people Ellinor loved through her life and the impact the tiny moments had on her. It’s also a great reminder that love does not have to be strictly romantic - platonic, parental, so on so forth also exist. This was especially clear in the description of the drift between child and adult that happens (seemingly) to everyone. Seeing drifts like this breaks my heart, because I am incredibly close to my family. I can’t imagine my love for them becoming something I use past tense for, but in reading this I could understand why that could occur. It hurt but it was eye opening.
This was a fantastic experience and, for the length it is, I really do recommend it for everyone who wants to see what another person’s grief could look like.
elighorl's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
chefs kiss. the writing is so good. i found this book at the right time.
jessica_m's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.5
febeleest's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
3.75*
Mama's boekenkast.
Dit was kort, maar zeer krachtig. De schrijfstijl was een beetje te droog, maar dit zou aan de vertaling kunnen liggen. Er waren een aantal prachtige quotes en het verhaal is vooral zeer ontroerend en reflecterend.
Mama's boekenkast.
Dit was kort, maar zeer krachtig. De schrijfstijl was een beetje te droog, maar dit zou aan de vertaling kunnen liggen. Er waren een aantal prachtige quotes en het verhaal is vooral zeer ontroerend en reflecterend.
karenreads1000s's review against another edition
5.0
This story really resonated with me. First person narrative written as if a long letter by Ellinor to Anna. "She had always had her books...Her books and her ideas, however vague, of something more."
karieh13's review against another edition
3.0
While reading this novel, I never got the sense that I was really understanding, really in touch with the main character, Ellinor. At times I wondered if it might be the translation holding me at bay, but in the end, I simply decided that this was just an essence of her character. Something in this woman, mourning the loss of her husband, addressing her best friend Anna (the first wife of Ellinor’s husband), that keeps her at arm’s length from the reader. It felt as if, even when she is attempting to be the most honest about herself and her feelings, there was something missing in her – something that had always been missing.
“I walked about at random from one neighborhood to the next. If it started raining, I would simply button up my coat and allow my hair to become wet. It always dries again, Anna. There isn’t a thing that doesn’t pass off. It strikes me that my account must seem sad to you but I am not a sad person, you know that. Often I am happy, as the song goes, happy inside, even if I can’t always show it.”
It’s not as if Ellinor cannot show she is happy, it seems as if she does not know what happy actually feels like. Instead of happy, it seems more accurate to say that she knows what the absence of sorrow/pain/unhappiness feels like, but not what experiencing actual joy or delight is like.
The book details the words Ellinor says/thinks to her dead friend Anna shortly after their mutual husband Georg dies. Ellinor truly seems to miss Georg, but again, in a more removed way. A way in which it is clear that she does not like him being gone, but not in a way that it seems as if she truly appreciated him when he was alive.
“I miss him all the time, but it is something different that I miss about him, at different times. His body next to me in bed, the sound of his steps, the familiar timbre of his voice in the familiar rooms. Without him, they’re just somewhere. His way of sighing, which wasn’t an expression of fatigue or despair but only, how to put it, a pneumatic effect of his composure. The sound of one man’s being in the world. A man I loved.”
In the end, I felt the book was more about her connection to Anna that Georg. Ellinor was married to Georg because Anna was married to him first. What Anna had, said, did had value to Ellinor. Georg was good as a husband because he had been Anna’s husband, because he was the father of Anna’s children, then Ellinor’s step-children. It seems as if Anna was the true center of Ellinor’s life, and her true grief goes back to losing her, and her attempt to recapture that feeling by taking on her role as wife and mother to Anna’s husband and children. Not in a scheming way, but in a way that is forlorn more than anything else.
“I miss him, my husband, our husband, I miss him so. There are times when I don’t know what to do with myself. That’s when I think that I’ve made a big mistake moving to Amerikajef. He would never find me here if he were to come back. I am not insane. It has dawned on me that human beings were never meant to reconcile their longing with reason, not at the expense of longing. As if I could love him in a lesser way just because he’s dead. That was never the meaning of words. That is why I am speaking to you.”
“I walked about at random from one neighborhood to the next. If it started raining, I would simply button up my coat and allow my hair to become wet. It always dries again, Anna. There isn’t a thing that doesn’t pass off. It strikes me that my account must seem sad to you but I am not a sad person, you know that. Often I am happy, as the song goes, happy inside, even if I can’t always show it.”
It’s not as if Ellinor cannot show she is happy, it seems as if she does not know what happy actually feels like. Instead of happy, it seems more accurate to say that she knows what the absence of sorrow/pain/unhappiness feels like, but not what experiencing actual joy or delight is like.
The book details the words Ellinor says/thinks to her dead friend Anna shortly after their mutual husband Georg dies. Ellinor truly seems to miss Georg, but again, in a more removed way. A way in which it is clear that she does not like him being gone, but not in a way that it seems as if she truly appreciated him when he was alive.
“I miss him all the time, but it is something different that I miss about him, at different times. His body next to me in bed, the sound of his steps, the familiar timbre of his voice in the familiar rooms. Without him, they’re just somewhere. His way of sighing, which wasn’t an expression of fatigue or despair but only, how to put it, a pneumatic effect of his composure. The sound of one man’s being in the world. A man I loved.”
In the end, I felt the book was more about her connection to Anna that Georg. Ellinor was married to Georg because Anna was married to him first. What Anna had, said, did had value to Ellinor. Georg was good as a husband because he had been Anna’s husband, because he was the father of Anna’s children, then Ellinor’s step-children. It seems as if Anna was the true center of Ellinor’s life, and her true grief goes back to losing her, and her attempt to recapture that feeling by taking on her role as wife and mother to Anna’s husband and children. Not in a scheming way, but in a way that is forlorn more than anything else.
“I miss him, my husband, our husband, I miss him so. There are times when I don’t know what to do with myself. That’s when I think that I’ve made a big mistake moving to Amerikajef. He would never find me here if he were to come back. I am not insane. It has dawned on me that human beings were never meant to reconcile their longing with reason, not at the expense of longing. As if I could love him in a lesser way just because he’s dead. That was never the meaning of words. That is why I am speaking to you.”
poischiche31's review against another edition
4.0
Moving. The last two sentences made me feel everything.