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curiousreader's review against another edition
4.0
My first array into Sigrid Undset, it's not actually a novel but a collection of six short stories; with one central theme being "poverty"/"misfortune". The original title, "Fattige skjebner", literally means "Poor destinies" (as far as I can tell from a Swedish perspective). Each story focuses on a different set of characters, as they live their lives and carry the load that they've been dealt - some are poor in the sense of money, others in terms of relationships and self fulfilment . Some are lonely in foreign cities or up in the mountains, others deal with love trouble or other human relationships in knots. I do feel like there's a heavier lean towards the female characters of the stories, which is nice for any classics really (let's be honest, how much of the literary cannon is focused on the men of the world). There's, in my mind at least, a focus on the women and not only that but the different ways in which women of the time were restricted, the ways the expectations and the norms of society shaped their lives and their roles in life, what the women thought of each other, even what they wanted for themselves.
Although the stories are about misfortune, it's not all sad - like life is rarely just bad or sad. It's filled with the good things too, the small moments of happiness or of light. Nothing much happens in these stories - they're quiet and mostly filled with meetings and dialogues and pondering, but that's what I like to read anyway. What made this stand out for me was the fact that each story stands on its own two legs - I remember them all and I can see each place and the main characters of the stories in my head clearly, as separate from each other as if they were different books.
I look forward to delving deeper into Sigrid Undset's bibliography in the future.
Although the stories are about misfortune, it's not all sad - like life is rarely just bad or sad. It's filled with the good things too, the small moments of happiness or of light. Nothing much happens in these stories - they're quiet and mostly filled with meetings and dialogues and pondering, but that's what I like to read anyway. What made this stand out for me was the fact that each story stands on its own two legs - I remember them all and I can see each place and the main characters of the stories in my head clearly, as separate from each other as if they were different books.
I look forward to delving deeper into Sigrid Undset's bibliography in the future.
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