To Mervas
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
To Mervas is a turbulent journey through the wilderness of memory, domestic violence, and the vast gulf between lost lovers. After years of insulating herself from humanity in the wake of her disabled son’s death, Marta is jolted out of exile when a cryptic note arrives from Mervas, a ghost town deep in Sweden’s desolate northern wilds. The letter is from Kosti, her once-great love, shattering a silence of more than twenty years. When spring comes she sets off alone for Mervas, without any notion of who or what might await her there. Physical and emotional abuse, longing and loss, and the nature of love and redemption are explored with remarkable empathy and a visceral lyricism in Elizabeth Rynell’s stirring novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A wrenching tale by Swedish novelist and poet Rynell traces a woman's personal journey through shame and violence. Out of the blue, Marta receives a troubling note from an ex-lover, Kosti, whom she has tried to forget for more than 20 years and who now inexplicably summons her to Mervas, an all but abandoned Nordic mining town. Marta, nearing 50, with a long-suppressed background of growing up under an intensely abusive father, has recently come to peace with the death of her teenage son, whose severe physical and mental handicaps had absorbed her life. Not insignificantly, Marta and Kosti broke up because she wanted to have kids, and he didn't, and so she got pregnant by someone else. The novel cuts to devastating flashbacks and flash forwards as Marta travels to Mervas, while a tender interlude with an elderly couple challenges Marta to stop hiding from her life. Rynell proves a fearless writer in this emotionally relentless work and finds a lyrical grace in Marta's self-awareness.
