Open Serendipity

This old book, 1943, appeared on my bookshelf.  No one remembers where it came from.  It is out of print and nothing by this author is listed in the Santa Clara County library system, either.  A real shame because it is a wonderful book! (Used copies are available though.)

Anna and Jezza are sisters, and each chapter is titled either Anna’s Story or Jezza’s Story.  The first half of the book is set when they are girls, maybe ten years old or so.  They are unusual girls, wild little girls living with an assortment of relatives, no parents, in a beloved old house in the far north in Berg, Sweden.  Not twins, and not at all two peas in a pod: Jezza is a hellion and Anna is nearly silent and such a beauty the two sisters consider it a serious problem and worry about the men who will purportedly chase after her with their tongues hanging out and make her get married and leave Berg and each other.  They try cutting off her hair, but she persists in looking beautiful.

At first I expected the girls to grow up quickly, and tried to read between the lines of the childish accounts to understand what was really going on in the house full of eccentrics.  But soon I realized that the plot was by far of secondary importance to the rich descriptions, observations, and pure emotions narrated by these two young characters.

When I found the second half had taken a temporal leap of a decade or more, I was worried that the author could not possibly do as well with adult characters as she had done with the girls.  Yet she did.  As they had planned as girls, Jezza goes off to travel to discover things and then come home to tell Anna.  Anna goes through her own discoveries right there in Berg.  The reader cannot take the epiphanies along the way too seriously, because they are so wrapped up in the rapid development typical of young adults.  For example, Anna is distraught over poverty in the world, but later when she is in love, seems to have forgotten all about blight in her joy at being alive on earth in the here and now!  Typical of love.

And yet, the final epiphanies of the two women can be taken seriously to heart because they are in accord with the philosophies of Rolf and Grandmother, two god-like yet absolutely human characters.  Rolf is the widower of one of the girls (many) aunts and lives in Berg even though every year his own family demands that he abandon Berg and return to them.  He and Grandmother each know the secret to living.  Grandmother explains it a little bit when she tells the girls a story of a man with a garden, and then explains the title of the book, which is a metaphor for saving one’s soul.  Mostly Grandmother and Rolf just live their own lives, utterly loving everyone each in their own way, as an example for the rest of us mere mortals to follow as best we can.

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Books by marla