What are you reading the week of Sunday, May 31, 2015? [View all]
Last day of May...
Well, it took me all week to get through Blackwater (434 pages), by Kerstin Ekman (Sweden) - I just finished it yesterday. It was a difficult book, written in a very strange, dreamlike style. I couldn't read much of it at a time, because it made me feel sort of unmoored from reality. Not sure how to explain it - it's just that there were all these scenes and locations and characters, and none of them were done head-on. It was all hints and out-of-focus perspective, like everything was taking place in one's peripheral vision. At times while I was reading it, it reminded me very much of some of Ingmar Bergman's more abstract films.
It also didn't help that there were all these Swedish place-names, mostly unpronouncable to a non-Swedish speaker, and I had no known geographical frame of reference, not being at all familiar with that part of Sweden - somewhere among the northern mountains near the border with Norway. Even so, it was actually (almost literally) a spell-binding book. By the time I finally made it to the end, I suddenly understood what had been happening, and I was absolutely stunned by the force of what the author had actually accomplished.
I think I may have to read it again someday - although definitely not right away. It truly was an amazing piece of writing, and I understand why it won several prizes when it was first published.
So, now I've started on another Kerstin Ekman novel, Under the Snow. I figure, why not? Since the first one drove me nearly crazy, I have little sanity left to lose! 
What are you reading this week?
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