![]() ![]() Perhaps I needed those years to develop a palate able to appreciate what rich gift patient, thorough storytelling is. It’s taken me about 40 years to get back to her. Still, I remembered the careful accrual of detail and the power of the writing and made a mental note to read more Undset. ![]() ![]() ![]() The world lit collection contained a selection from Kristin Lavransdatter I. (For those familiar with the work, it’s the chapter where Kristin and Ingeborg become lost in the forest and are rescued from the German boys by Erland.) I found it rich, engrossing writing, though the pace was not such that it appealed to me in my youth. The school where I taught had a set of world literature texts that they were discarding (the books were in great shape and to this day I puzzle over why books full of world literature classics were being discarded) and I snagged one of them and over the course of a few weeks of casual reading made my way through a variety of selections by writers I knew like Hugo and Goethe and de Maupassant and Cervantes – and writers I sort of knew like Strindberg (“ Half a Sheet of Paper” shows how flash fiction should be done) and writers I didn’t know – like Sigrid Undset. I first came across Sigrid Undset during my first year of teaching. Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (image courtesy Goodreads) ![]()
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