A review by districtreads
Marta Oulie by Sigrid Undset

5.0

When this book came out in the author's native Norway, it made a huge and controversial splash. With one of the best opening lines I've ever read - "I have been unfaithful to my husband" - you're dragged right into Marta's revealing diary entries, her disappointing marriage, and her just-as-disappointing love affair. Even translated (and what a great translation this was), this is an incomparable and astonishing novel. It's unsurprising that Undset won a Nobel Prize for Literature, and I'm shocked it took this long to become more widely known in the United States. I'd compare this to Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, or even The Scarlet Letter in its intensity.

Cross-posted on http://off-the-book.org.