Rating: 
Summary: Women's saga
Review: Hanna's Daughters is a tale spanning three generation's of a Swedish family. It is told by Anna, who in a last ditch effort to understand her mother, gathers letter, diaries, and journals to read about her mother and grandmother's life. The story is told through a series of flashbacks with can be disconcerting until you catch the rhythm of the story. The life of the three women revolves around mother-daughter relationships and the path our lives take as a result of the decisions we make. Each woman struggles with similar heartbreaks (although they don't always know what the other one is/has gone through) They struggle with marriage, children, death, and finding ones self worth in a sometimes harsh world. While I enjoyed the story (possibly due to my Swedish heritage!) I still felt the story plodded in some sections so I only gave it a three star rating.
Rating: 
Summary: Anna, Hanna and Johanna
Review: Hanna's Daughters was originally published Anna, Hanna and Johanna in Scandinavia. Grandmother, mother, daughter - all three of the women are all of the above, but here, Hanna is the grandmother, Johanna is the mother, and Anna is the daughter. Each woman has her own poignant story in this riveting novel of three generations.
In 1986, ailing Johanna is suffering from Alzheimer's. Her daughter, Anna, watches over her. She reflects on her grandmother, Hanna Bromam.
Hanna's story is filled with perserverance. When she is twelve, she is sent to a farm ruled by a harsh woman. The years at farm are not pleasant, for she is raped and gives birth to a son at thirteen. To save her family name, she is married to a middle-aged miller named John Bromam. They work and raise a family. Relatives are featured in Hanna's life, including her beautiful sister Astrid who lives in Norway. At the turn of the century (1902), Johanna is born.
The book was translated from Swedish, and many sentences in Hanna's story sound stiff and grammatically incorrect. Well, nothing can be translated 100% correctly. Although it can be slow, the dialect in the beginning adds a little flair to the book.
Back in 1986, Anna is going through a difficult time in life because of her husband's infidelity, ironically named Rickard. Johanna's story, 1902-1986, is in first person. I think it is the best section because she gives insight on her thoughts. It talks about her relationship with her mother, her political beliefs, the "Ice Queen," and WWII. Her life is not without tragedy either. This section allows readers to commiserate with Johanna.
The ending... I think the ending could have been written better because I feel the situation between Rickard and Anna is never fully resolved. Maybe that is something left up to the reader.
Hanna's Daughters was very riveting. Fredriksson moves the book along nicely, and I enjoyed the point of view change in Johanna's story. This is a nice U.S. debut for Fredriksson, and I am looking forward to more moving novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Hanna, Anna and Johanna
Review: Hanna, Anna and Johanna is the tittle of Hanna's Daughters in its native Swedish, and I wonder why the tittle was changed in the English translation, the original is much more what the book is all about. This book is one of the most moving and wonderful books I have ever read. The story takes me back to my native Finland, Sweden's neighbour, and to the lives of many great grandmothers, grandmothers and mothers that I have known there. Some of them, just like Hanna, had to endure similar hardships in their lives, especially women in the 19th Century if they had a child out of wedlock. It was very shameful. It was considered a sin, and only the woman was blamed. Children out of wedlock were treated as outcasts. People's lives in old Scandinavia used to be heavily ruled by very condemning old religious values that almost all people practiced. It took strong feminists like Anna, and hard workers like Johanna, to change the old ways and beliefs. I also found this book quite entertaining. Marianne Fredrikson wrote this book very compasionately and humorously.
Rating:
Summary: Three women through hundred years of history
Review: I had a hard time putting this book down. The chapters on the three different women (mother, daughter and granddaughter) and their history was fascinating. It was very interesting how their roles as women/mothers/wifes developed through their own lives which made me think about the bonds of mothers and daughters in my family.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: Not always easy to follow, but worth the effort.
Review: There's a lot going on in Hanna's Daughters, and there's a lot of ground covered, and there are a lot of characters (and the fact that some of them have identical names makes it even more confusing). Sometimes all this makes for slow going, but it's worth the effort. In short, it's a family saga, a history of the women in one Swedish family moving through the history of Europe over a span of nearly a century.
Multi-layered, full of secrets, harsh truths, resentment and bitterness over the decades, it's worth the trouble it takes to plough through it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful tale of family relationships
Review: This book is a little difficult to get into at first, because of the change in narrators between chapters, and the similarity in the character's names. But once you get going, you can't put it down.
The book details the lives of three generations of women; a mother, daughter, and granddaughter. As a reader you will easily relate to one or all of these women, even though they lived different lives in a different time and in a different country. You will find parallels to your own life and your own relationships. The book is a journey into family and into that "a-ha!" moment when you discover that your mother is not just your mother, but she is a woman who has had similar experiences as you, and who also may have had some terrible experiences that have shaped who she is - and ultimately how you are.
Family history researchers will also appreciate the book and its journey through time, and the concept that only good memories are often remembered and shared; but it is the not-so-good memories that make our lives interesting and true.
A great book club selection that spawns wonderful conversation.
Rating:
Summary: Borderlands
Review: This is an awfully good book from Sweden. It concerns farming families of the borderlands of Norway and Sweden. In the present an old woman lies in a nursing home without memory and sense, but with dreams. She also has history, a daughter, granddaughter, husband, (deceased). Then there is a flashback to her youth and rape and young motherhood. A widower wanted to marry her. He wanted the child with him, too. John Broman was good to Hanna. He liked children. His mother was mad. Broman became a miller. The couple had three sons. Johanna, the daughter, was born much later. The half-brother, Ragnar, was sent to Norway to serve an apprenticeship. He became fascinated with automobiles. Ragnar came home and became attached to his little sister. Ragnar bought an automobile. John Broman, the miller, died. Hanna became a bakery worker. Hanna's grandchild, Anna, found her papers and made a scrap book. It seems that Johanna was very separate from Hanna. She spent most of her time in her girlhood with Ragnar and his wife, Lisa. The book proceeds as far as the death of Johanna. It is not overly schematic. Old-fashioned and modern, the story ranges freely.
Rating:
Summary: Borderlands
Review: This is an awfully good book from Sweden. It concerns farming families of the borderlands of Norway and Sweden. In the present an old woman lies in a nursing home without memory and sense, but with dreams. She also has history, a daughter, granddaughter, husband, (deceased). Then there is a flashback to her youth and rape and young motherhood. A widower wanted to marry her. He wanted the child with him, too. John Broman was good to Hanna. He liked children. His mother was mad. Broman became a miller. The couple had three sons. Johanna, the daughter, was born much later. The half-brother, Ragnar, was sent to Norway to serve an apprenticeship. He became fascinated with automobiles. Ragnar came home and became attached to his little sister. Ragnar bought an automobile. John Broman, the miller, died. Hanna became a bakery worker. Hanna's grandchild, Anna, found her papers and made a scrap book. It seems that Johanna was very separate from Hanna. She spent most of her time in her girlhood with Ragnar and his wife, Lisa. The book proceeds as far as the death of Johanna. It is not overly schematic. Old-fashioned and modern, the story ranges freely.
Rating:
Summary: A Book to Touch the Heart
Review: This was a wonderful book. Growing up with a grandmother who came from a similar background I developed a greater insight into her and my family after reading this book. The story is not just about Hanna and her daughters but about a culture, their behaviors, and their intrinsic values. As readers we bring our experiences to what we read. It is possible that this book is more deeply appreciated by an older generation. Meaning those that have been both mothers, and daughters, and possibly grandmothers. I rate this as one of the finest books I have ever read.
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