Often I Am Happy
Jens Christian Grøndahl
Translated by Jens Christian Grøndahl
19 April 2018Imprint: Picador
Synopsis
When Ellinor addresses her best friend Anna, she does not expect a reply. Anna has been dead for forty years, killed in the same skiing accident that claimed Henning: Ellinor’s first husband and Anna’s lover.
Ellinor instead tells her that Georg has died – Georg who was once Anna’s, but whom Ellinor came to love in her place, and whom she...
Details
19 April 2018160 pages
9781509842407Imprint: Picador
Reviews
In Danish novelist Grøndahl’s stunning latest, a recently widowed 70-year-old woman reexamines her life and past decisions . . . A compassionate and often edifying commentary on the elasticity of love, the strength it takes to move forward after a death, and the power of forgiveness.Publishers Weekly, starred review
This atmosphere of nonchalance, of indifference, of cracked glass, is the signature atmosphere of Jens Christian Grøndahl . . . Often I Am Happy is [among Grøndahl’s works] one of the most condensed, most suffused with grief and mixed beauty . . . His characters, so perfectly drawn, nevertheless thrive only as they disappear. The real, in the work of this great novelist, also has about it something of the haziness of memory.Livres Hebdo
