Spring Night

TARJEI VESAAS (1897-1970), shortlisted for the Nobel Prize on a number of occasions, was one of Norway's greatest modern writers. In this 1954 novel sixteen-year old Sissel and her young brother Olaf have been left minding their parents' farm for the night. But when a strange family descends upon them, lost, in a broken-down car, the children have to cope alone. Crete, who is in labor, is accompanied by her distraught husband, childish father-in-law, and a mysterious girl, Gudrun, who seems to have stepped right out of one of Oalf's dreams. Vesaas's novel is a beautifully rendered portrait of adolescent experience. But by the end of the spring night there has been not only a birth but a death in the house, and adolescence has vanished forever.

Romance