Having answered a Berlin newspaper advertisement for “strong women who can cook and do farm work,” Sophie Charlotte finds herself married with two sons on an Icelandic sheep farm, trying to sever cords of memory that lead back to the powerful love she knew in Germany and all that she lost there. When World War II began, Charlotte was attached to a supremely talented but politically furious painter in Berlin. But she would lose him twice: first to the resistance and then to the camps. More wounding for Charlotte, however, is the unforgiving trace of their daughter, Lena, who at five years old tragically disappeared into the chaos of the War.This is an extraordinarily beautiful saga that links sure-footed portraits of wartime Berlin and the severity of life in the Icelandic countryside. Moving and genuinely affirming, Seal Woman is a many-colored portrayal of a strong woman’s life broken in two stark and unforgiving worlds separated by the North Atlantic.
Оглавление
Solveig Eggerz. Seal Woman
I - Ragnar
At the End of the World
A Gift
The Deepest Landscape Painting
A Creature Going Ashore
A Weather-ruled Man
The Second Time in Her Life
Take it Off, Petronella
The Sound of a Horse Neighing
II - Max
Jewish Jokes
You're an Artist
Your Breasts are Your Best Credentials
A Taste of Anisette
Wood on Bone
Hues of Yellow and Lilac
The Fault of the Jews
The Peddler
Eating Porcelain
Idealist
The Warmth of Acceptance
A Bright Red Dot
I Won't Abandon My Country
Raising Flowered Skirts
I Won't Be a Coward
Artemisia
The Bear Dance
A Dolphin-like Creature
The Bear's Foot
A Yellow and Blue Dress
The Smell of the Hawthorn Bush
The Tundra Painter
III - Henrik
Rooted in Strange Soil
The Juice of an Orange
A Bird's Breath on Her Skin
An Odd Desire
Giving Birth to Life All Over Again
He Was My Man
Troll Games
A Weak Light Across the Snow
Christmas
Dog Day King
Old People Talk to Cows
The Tug of the Ocean
The Plash of Oars
With a Man's Heart
Phantom Lover
I Have Something to Tell You
IV - Lena
Do Everything They Say
A Dirty Old Thing
A Choking Feeling
Tiny Crow's Feet
Capturing a Likeness
ABOUT THE STORY
Отрывок из книги
Charlotte stood on the black sand. The surf swirled around the toes of her boots. Columns of hardened lava rose from the water like wading trolls. Fulmars quarreled in the cliffs above. Her desire to speak the forbidden names was overwhelming. She raised her head and directed her voice to the leaden line where ocean and sky met.
Max. Lena.
.....
Talking was also not his strength. When she first arrived at the farm, he'd scattered words at her, and she'd pecked at them. Later, she'd learned to enjoy his stroking at night, his murmuring about new milk filters and fence posts.
Back then she hardly understood him. Picking her way among the tussocks behind a cow's swinging udder, she'd moved her lips searching for phrases. Ragnar had named things and made her repeat the words. But once he'd established her basic farm vocabulary, he'd gone quiet. Back then, it hadn't mattered so much. She'd been moving forwards into a new life. That was before she realized how time looped back on you and knocked you down with things you'd rather forget.
