Working the Xmas Eve shift at the bookshop today. There's less last-minute panic-buying prezzies than I thought. Customer just asked me to recommend something "uplifting". Bombed out badly. Now if they'd asked for something "cheerless" I would have recommended NIELS LYHNE by #JPJacobsen. No spoilers but it ended on a devastating note & the last line left me feeling gloomy as hell.
Something lighter next up: ST. ROCHE: A ROMANCE by German novelist #HenriettePaalzow tr. by James Justinian Morier.
"There are people who take up their sorrow & bear it, strong natures that test their strength by the weight of the burden..But there are people to whom grief is a deed of violence perpetrated against them, an act of cruelty they never learn to regard as a trial or chastisement..still less as the common fate of all. To them it seems a stroke of tyranny, something to be personally resented & the sting..remains in their hearts."
#AmReading NIELS LYHNE by #JPJacobsen tr. by #HenryHandelRichardson
Had a gut feeling I was butchering the pronunciation of the title character's name. No, it's not "Kneels Line" but something more like "Nills Lune" (as in Clair de Lune). Was also pleasantly surprised to discover the novel was translated by a favourite Australian author.
#AmReading NIELS LYHNE by #JPJacobsen tr. by #HenryHandelRichardson (pen name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson).
Paul Filev