To allow icy water to numb, and then, oddly warm, slip down with surprising ease to the bottom of your grief. Anyway, the two girls herein, Elsa and An—er, I mean Siss and Unn—are not sisters, but rather friends in a remote community in rural Norway. I have to thank a couple of Goodread friends (again) for bringing this frozen gem of a story to my attention.

This is a sublime piece of art which masterfully portrays the intensity of new discovered feelings peaking at an early age and the necessity to merge the opposing forces involved in the process of growing up to become a whole being, and also to accept emptiness and loss as facets of life, even if that means getting rid of a part of oneself. Unn confesses that she has something she needs to share with Siss and tells her that ‘I’m not sure that I’ll go to heaven’. Combined with a cold color scheme, an eerie 80s synth soundtrack reminiscent of horror films and impeccable location shooting and production design (the titular Ice Palace is stunning), the film conveys a lot with very little. The simple direct language all the more capable of poetry, perfectly formed intercuts of non-narrative scenes (snow-fleas, birds of prey), heightening mood and quietly pulsing with the theme beneath the story.I’ve learned to read and love poetry, to read it aloud and enjoy the resonance of words painstakingly chosen. His mastery of the nynorsk language, landsmål (see Norwegian language), has contributed to its acceptance as a medium of world class literature.

Unn prefers to stand on her own away from the group, sometimes watching them at play but mostly just gazing absently at the wall.In such a short amount of time and in so few, yet potent, words, Vesaas delivers a chilling, metaphor-driven tale of loss set in the dense winters of Norway. But Siss is left to deal with the aftermath on her own, struggling to cope with remorse and guilt, trying to keep true to the memories of her missing almost friend. Unn wants to enter the ice palace, and even though I was ready to vomit from nerves, I needed her to enter it, too. Sometimes, when you lose someone, the loss is so bewildering and heavy, you have to decide whether to break off a part of yourself in letting them go, or be pulled under with them.

Naked flames of innocence and enthusiasm, they shed their clothes and danced around each other, coming very close then jumping away in fright at the intensity of the feeling. I loved reading books already, I loved the stories they told and the adventures I could vicariously experience but words in themselves? Gracias a esta editorial podemos disfrutar de un libro escandinavo excepcional, con una edición inmejorable y una nota de editor que nos vuelve a brindar un cierre encomiable a la par que maravilloso a la lectura. The ice palace of the title is a natural structure that has built up around a half-frozen waterfall in the woods outside the village.The film focuses slightly more on Unn's secret feelings than the novel, but otherwise it's very true to the book, with the same slow snow-laden pace. Unn left for school as normal, but felt overwhelmed about seeing Siss again after the previous evening and decided to take the day off. Fearing that they are about to fall out, Sally Carrol proposes bringing their wedding forward, but Harry rejects the idea.

The Ice Palace is a fantastic story about Ivan's land, a land where children are taken by 'Starjik' the wizard. What's more this cruel horrible nasty man that is going to kill you ends up turning into Father Christmas. Ich weiß nicht, wie diese Anziehungskraft zwischen den Mädchen in den 60er-Jahren rezipiert wurde (oder was Vesaas Intentionen waren), aber aus heutiger Sicht ist sie bemerkenswert, diese Mischung aus Neugier, Bewunderung und Erotik, die sich auf Unn konzentriert. Although short, allot happens in this book in nice short digestible chunks making it really good for new fluent readers or reading in sections in class, which is where I first encountered it in year 3. In the school yard Siss refuses to join in with their games but just stands, silently where Unn once stood.His first book ' When Darkness Comes' was written as a college thesis and published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1972. The ice palace attracts visitors from all over the district in the winter months and is a source of fascination for the children.