Grace [Hardcover]

This short novel hums with honesty as it charts the life of a terminal patient, Johan Sletten, and his circle, but GRACE never stoops to cheap sentiment. I would like to unpack another review, which contends that Linn Ullmann has "an exclusive commitment to exposing life's banality" and a "condescending tone" that locks the reader out of the story. Taking the word at face value, of course life is banal -- what else can it be? We all have in common that we will die; there is nothing original there. Yet Ullmann emphatically finds meaning in life, in simple things like the dark strands of hair of Sletten's second wife, or her dutiful tending to a boil on his face. The human connections are true and moving, and we are only "locked out" of this story if we are expecting to be covered in sentimental goop and "feelings" a la the Oprah show; thankfully, Ullmann does not oblige. A condescending tone? Ullmann is clear-eyed, grown-up, and has no illusions about human virtuousness. If that's condescending, then Joseph Conrad was condescending. GRACE is a beautiful little book.

I love the way Linn Ullmann has portrayed the married life in a darker, more surreal manner in Before You Sleep and Stella Descending. She does not sugarcoat the events when it is time to show the darker side of characters in love. Ullmann takes things to unflinching heights with Grace. This novel centers on a man's terminal illness with cold, unsentimental language that is both thought provoking and disturbing. Jonah, a journalist, learns he has six months left to live. As he waits around for death to befall him, he regales the reader with stories about his former relationships and the things he had done up to the moment that the doctor gives him the terrible news.

There is no way to summarize the plot of this novel. Linn Ullmann readers know that her novels are complex -- they jump from one different scene to another, with a lot of magic realism into the mix. The most fascinating part of Grace is the author's ability to turn what could have been a sad story into something disarming. The characters are all dark and unpleasant -- and the language of the novel makes them all the darker. The ending is one of the most disturbing ones I have read. I finished this book last night and I am still spooked over some of the scenes and passages. This is one incredible novel. Linn Ullmann has proven once again that she is a talented Scandinavian literary novelist. I recommend all of her novels, including this new piece of work.

... how can you hope to die with grace? That's the dilemma of Johan Sletten, a man in his 60s who has been diagnosed with an incurable disease, presumably cancer, and warned that he will die a nasty death within six months. Johan's life, as he painfully reviews it, has been largely a failure -- a mediocre career as a journalist, capped by a scandal that forced him into retirement, a miserable first marriage, a loveless fatherhood and a son he's ashamed of. The only grace he can claim for his life is the love of his second wife Mai, whom he literally calls his "grace". Now that he must live through the horror of dying, his most agonizing fear is the disgrace of losing control, of dying disgustingly, as his own father had died. Mai is a doctor, and it's with Mai whom Johan pleads for help in his assertion of a graceful death.

This is not a first person tale; supposedly Johan is a 'friend' of the narrator, but the course of his death and the scenes from his memory are all told from Johan's viewpoint. I think that's one of the limiting factors of this novella; the 'words' are not really Johan's, and Johan lies on his hospital bed just beyond our psychological credence. Mai is an unknown hovering presence, an object of Johan's mental perception, but perhaps it was the author's intention to imply that "another person", even one's sole beloved object, can never be depended upon to be 'known'.

One of Johan's happier memories is of his childhood, of picking wild strawberries with his mother, yet even that memory stirs a fear of abandonment and isolation in him. Wild Strawberries? Haven't we encountered such a scene in another work of art from Scandinavia? Another tale of the approaching death of an old man? Linn Ullmann is the daughter of actress Liv Ullmann and film-maker Ingmar Bergmann, whose film "Wild Strawberries" is among the most poignant portrayals of aging and death ever produced. I can't deny that I sought, bought, and read this novella because of my interest in the artistry of the author's parents. And I have to wonder, reluctantly, whether Linn Ullmann's parentage didn't play a role in the success of her writing career. Would this novel have convinced a publisher to risk money on releasing it if the author's name had been Jana Jonsen? Well, it's not a bad novella ... a little thin at times and awfully doleful. Honestly, it reads like a scenario for a film (and guess who the director might be) in which the characters would develop curves - dimensions - and evoke more empathy simply by being flesh rather than print-face. The director would allow the actors and actresses to improvise their lines, to speak from their own inhabitation of their roles. That was Bergmann's method in his later films. Appreciating this novella requires just that sort of collaboration between the author and the reader.