A Postcard For Annie

A Postcard For Annie
Ida Jessen, Martin Aitken
RRP:
NZ$ 37.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 30.39
Paperback
h165 x 139mm - 180pg
21 Jun 2022 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781953861221
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Writing with the same narrative generosity, the same belief in the dignity and voice of her characters as Marilynne Robinson, this prize-winning collection of stories follows the inner lives of several women on the brink, or the sidelines, of catastrophe. 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 splash 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.
"Jessen' s writing is graceful, unhurried, convincing. The narratives unfold in unexpected ways . . . The complexities of love and the passage of time enrich this insightful, original collection. " --Kirkus Reviews "In A Postcard for Annie Ida Jessen has honed to perfection her own quite unique form of psychological realism, in a work in which, once more, the women take centre stage; in which secrets, irrational forces and often anything but sensible explanations prevail-and in which she proves herself to be a brilliant depictor of people who find themselves in situations that are both familiar and far-out. " --Danish Literary Magazine "Danish writer Ida Jessen' s A Postcard for Annie has at its heart a possible suicide and the reaction of witnesses, especially the narrator--a fascinating narrative with various unexpected twists. " --The Irish Times Praise for Jessen' s A Change of Time, translated by Martin Aitken "In A Change of Time, Ida Jessen has crafted a masterpiece of the epistolary novel told in diary entries. Each log is rich with detail . . . Here, one-liners-beautifully translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken-are deeply felt. " --Bibi Deitz, Bookforum "The text shines as an honest reckoning with the death of a spouse-but one in a deeply companionless marriage-and the life of two people who shared little but space. . . Jessen, the Danish translator of Marilynne Robinson, among others, proves to have a keen Robinsonian streak of her own. She writes with the same narrative generosity, the same belief in the dignity and voice of characters that might usually be dismissed. " --Joel Pinckney, The Millions "Wit and vivid descriptions are presented in equal measure, as issues of sexual desire and the need for both solitude and companionship come to the fore. An engaging, honest, and beautifully written look at love, loss, and self-realization. " --Kirkus Reviews "Jessen is a talented and empathetic writer (and kudos must be given to translator Aitken, whose translation is supple and luminous), and has imbued a quiet story about a woman finding herself after her husband' s death with poignancy and stunning humanity. " --Publishers Weekly, starred review "Imagine picking up a woman' s diary and trying to decipher her character. Imagine teasing out enough from the details to understand her life, her loves, and the circumstances that have made her who she is. . . Ida Jessen' s novel A Change of Time brings this story to life with spare, yet beautiful, prose superbly translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. " --M. K. Tod, Washington Independent Review of Books "Weaving together diary entries, poems, letters (both opened and unopened) and song, Ida Jessen' s A Change of Time, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, is a stirring reflection on death and mourning, loneliness, and female identity in a changing 20th century Denmark. " --Asymptote Journal "A Change of Time is a book of masterful restraint, and this restraint is a kind of tenderness. It is a book that understands that desire permeates everything - nothing human can be cleansed of it; and that sometimes love clings most inextricably to the smallest places - misjudgment, invisibility, loneliness. It is a book that deepens and dignifies both our innocence and our fallibility. " --Anne Michaels
IDA JESSEN made her literary debut in 1989 with the collection of short stories Under sten (Under Stones). Her fiction and children' s books have won an array of awards, including The Egholt Prize, The Albert Dam Grant, The Jytte Borberg Prize, and Danish Booksellers' Golden Laurels. In 2016, En ny tid (A Change of Time) won the Blixen Award as well as the Danish Broadcasting Corporation' s Best Novel Award. MARTIN AITKEN is the translator of numerous novels from Danish and Norwegian, including works by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Peter H eg, Kim Leine, Hanne rstavik, and Josefine Klougart. His translations of short stories and poetry have appeared in many literary journals and magazines. In 2012, he was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation' s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize.
Status: No local stock, title imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781953861221
Published: 21 Jun 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Archipelago Books
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Format: Paperback
Height: 165mm
Width: 139mm
Pages: 180

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