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Summary: Amazing to Watch the Evolution of Women in 3 Generations
Review: Many of us think our mothers and grandmothers are eccentric but dismiss them without really understanding their behavior. It's the Tradition and Misconception stall. We expect our mothers and grandmothers to be different from us so we ignore their perspectives without learning from their experiences. Seeing all these stories together are a 2,000 Percent Solution. It forces us to see the common threads and the reasons why different women make different choices. I chose my AOL name after being inspired by this book to honor 3 generations of women named Giovanna. Read Hanna's Daughters and then find out your own family story. You'll be glad you did.
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Summary: Study in ancestral ties
Review: Many readers seemed to find Frederiksson's "feminism" heavy-handed, yet I've known many women who became trapped by motherhood and motherhood alone. I thought that Frederiksson handled the dilemma realistically. I also found the "out-of-body" tone of her characters quite in keeping with the events that shaped them. As time went on, Hanna's thoughts became more and more provincial and insignificant, which is precisely what was happening to her on the outside. I must say I found many poignant points in this story, chief among them the way threads between generations get broken and lost. How this family began in the craggy, lonely mountains and ended up very citified, losing all the "old ways" of doing things. Hanna personified this when, moved to the city, she realizes she is no longer "the miller's wife" or even "the whore." She is no one. I imagine that if we all look back over our ancestors, we'd find the same loss of connection to who we are and where we came from. I loved this book!
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Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Marianne Fredriksson's writing brings you to the craggy hillsides of Scandanavia, and connects you to the political strains between two contries during WWII, through the lives of three generations of women: Hanna, her daughter Johanna, and Hanna's granddaughter, Anna.Each successive generation is living a life affected by the history of her mother or grandmother, without ever knowing the geneological history which has shaped her. The way history affects our fears... family affects our trusts... countryside affects our loves... Wonderful! I passed it on to 4 people when I was done.
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Summary: The Good, The Bad, and The Femi-Nazi
Review: OK, no doubt the book is good - I give it that. BUT- I'm glad I did not read the reader's guide located at the end of the novel prior to the book itself because I would have shut the book for good only because I found Fredricksson's opinions so offensive to me personally. (Check out the answer to question number two in the reader's guide) (Hey, Marianne- some women actually choose to stay home with their babies because the WANT to- because they actaully think it might be in the best interest of their children, and we aren't even poor, oppressed farmer's wives either- imagine that...) As a daughter of a Swede, I find many of my Swedish kinswomen to be quite forgetful of the traditions of family and, sadly, one finds many a broken home in the land of the midnight sun. This novel exemplifies what the socialist movement in Sweden has accomplshed while at the same time what is has sacrificed in terms of the institution of family. Actually, this is an excellent read. However, I disagree with some of the reviewers here who state they became lost the further back in time the story goes. Because I'm partial to historical fiction, I found the story of Hanna much more interesting than that of Anna's. The beginning of the novel pulled me in but by the final chapters I was losing interest because Anna was quite dull compared to both her mother and grandmother. The most compelling parts of the book revealed to me how different women marry today in contrast to the rather practical, emotionally devoid marriages of necessity from a hundred years ago. Interesting stuff.......read it if you get a chance.
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Summary: mixed feelings
Review: People seem to either love or hate this book. Since there are a lot of reviews already, I'll just discuss what I think are the pros and cons. I loved the description of the Swedish landscape and countryside, and this is definitely a country I'd like to visit. I also found interesting the life of the people from the 1800s to the early 1900s. Most people have heard of the terrible famine and poverty in Ireland, and know that is why a lot of Irish people emigrated. Probably far fewer know about the same conditions existing in Sweden, unless that is their ancestry. The book describes a way of life most of us can barely imagine. Hanna and her husband pushing and pulling the plow because they can't afford a horse, even though she is pregant and he is sick, because if they don't they will starve, along with the children they already have. Hanna's mother's first four children died of starvation. This happens today in many parts of the world, but people dont usually identify it with Sweden. You can see why people emigrated, they had no future. Life as a farmhand or a servant was probably much worse than the book portrays. Here are the negatives. The translation didnt do it. The title, not the original title, really didnt make sense. Hanna did only have one daughter. Dialect is a function of spoken language. When it is written, it is almost always cumbersome and awkward to read, and after awhile gets annoying, and that is in the original language. DIALECT DOESNT TRANSLATE. Forget about it. There is no way to effectively render Bavarian German or Mandarin Chinese or any other regional or ethnic dialect effectively into English. In this book it came out sounding like repeated use of poor grammar, and it got old. Much better to say that a person comes from a certain area and speaks that dialect, and maybe give a few examples of differences in words and expressions. It was more effective to have Hanna ask Ragnar when he came home speaking standard Swedish instead of the dialect whether he had learned a foreign language. Johanna's character, as well as Arne's, was confusing and inconsistent. I dont care about an author's personal politics, but I dont think she got much of anything across with these two. Also there was a tendency to move very slowly, then suddenly skip 50 years or cover World War II in two or three pages. The book seemed very uneven. It was also distracting to have characters not only with similar names, but many with the same name. There are two Johannas, plus a Johannes, plus two Johns, two Annas, two Rickards. The author said she writes for herself and not the audience, and I guess in many ways she is right.
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Summary: Bookclub query
Review: Please explain- our bookclub group in Southern Sydney Australia enjoyed this book immensely but all found page 296 incomprehensible- was it a problem with the translation or did we all miss something important earlier in the book to explain the scenario with the visiting photographer?
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Summary: My Expectations Were Too High!
Review: Read this for a book club. Too many characters to follow, some of which I felt had no importance to the story. Had to force myself to read in the hope that it would get better. Enjoyed only about 45% of the book. Was really looking forward to a good read but found myself somewhat disappointed.
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Summary: I'd Rather Go to the Dentist
Review: Reading this book was torture. I should have stopped in th middle, but I thought it would get better. It didn't! Dull stories, too many characters, and bland leading ladies leave you wishing you never had the pleasure. Better luck next time Ms. Fredricsson!
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Summary: Powerful story of three generations of Swedish women.
Review: The author claims this is not autobiographical, yet her insights into the depth of her characters might suggest otherwise. Not only the events of their lives and their families, but their feelings and thoughts at each moment along the way. While some of my book group did not like the interlacing of Anna's story into that of her mother's and grandmother's, I found this both a great literary device for this story(ies) and a way of keeping me from losing the continuity of the three lives and how the past repeats itself. The translation from Swedish resulted in rather terse and unembellished prose, but I liked this also. Being of Scandinavian heritage and knowing the story of my grandmother's hard life in Denmark and Minnesota, I could relate to the level of detachment women used as a defense mechanism and their stoic and silent way of bearing all things. The richness of the characters and story have stayed with me long after reading the last page. This is my test of a good novel.
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Summary: A drag to finish
Review: There were too many characters that were similiar. I couldn't keep up with who was who and after awhile, I just didn't care anymore. I read this book for a book club and felt obligated to finish it. I don't understand why so many readers connected with the characters. I guess I'm in the minority though.
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