Just a Mother

What praise is left for me to shower on Roy Jacobsen? I've called his writing a "document for the ages," said of it that "I don't think I've ever read anything that better touched the essential truth of what it is to be alive," and referred to the small Norwegian island that is his main setting as "the bedrock on which our fiction section is built." The subtle understatement that gives his work such power is evident in the very title of his most recent novel, which again centers on Ingrid Barrøy, now the matriarch of an ever-changing clan. As she and her family cope with the aftermath of a world war and a shift from subsistence to prosperity, Jacobsen traces their progress with expert grace. Every development in their lives arrives so naturally that the reader feels a momentary shock, then a sense of satisfying inevitability. For us at Madison Books, this may be the publishing event of the year. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter) New Book of the Week