A Postcard for Annie
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
“Jessen's writing is graceful, unhurried, convincing.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ida Jessen follows the inner lives of several women on the brink, or the sidelines, of catastrophe in this prize-winning collection of stories
Written with the same narrative generosity, the same belief in the dignity and voice of her characters as Marilynne Robinson
From the winner of the Lifetime Award from the Danish Arts Foundation and the 2017 Critics’ Choice Award, Ida Jessen’s A Postcard for Annie traces the tangled emotional lives of women facing moral dilemmas.
A young woman witnesses a terrible accident with unexpected consequences, a mother sits with her unconscious son in a hospital room, a pair of sisters remember their mother’s hands braiding their hair.
In seaside tourist villages and in snowy cities, turbulence destabilizes composed lives, whether through outright violence between strangers or habitual domination between loved ones.
Jessen fills each story with bracing passages that teem with the living world, only to become concentrated in the unfixed, vacillating matter of a human psyche caught between silence and speech, paralysis and action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jessen (A Change in Time) returns with a meticulously crafted collection showcasing her trademark psychological realism. In "Mother and Son," a woman's troubled son falls in with a group of violent boys and befriends an old man in the countryside who owns some horses. The story peaks with an act of violence followed by unspoken forgiveness. In the vignette "An Argument," Jessen paints a convincing portrait of a couple's relationship losing steam. In "An Excursion," a woman renowned for her work as a furniture upholsterer meets a stylish man at an antique fair. In the title story, the witnesses of a fatal bus accident attempt to move on with their lives. These are quiet dramas, and even when emotions rise to the surface, they do so in a subtle, simmering fashion. Sometimes Jessen's simplicity veers into the mundane, but for the most part it's elevated by beautiful construction as her characters face universal conflicts. There's also something of a celebration of Danish culture going on, with copious descriptions of, for instance, fried herring and lovely small towns. Jessen offers myriad if quiet delights.
