The Ice Palace (Peter Owen Modern Classics)

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You can’t help but feel the wind chill hit hard. Real hard. The Norwegian arthouse drama “ICE PALACE” (“IS-SLOTTET”) is a touching, gutting, unworldly and extremely candid tale of friendship and loneliness, caused by sexual awakening, forbidden feelings and guilt-ridden grief between two twelve-year-old girls in a remote mountain community in the 1930s. The book is quite dark in parts, however it is extremely descriptive and creates great imagery for children. After reading the story with year 3 children they produced some brilliant descriptive story writing with a focus on interesting adjectives and adverbs. Siss is both puzzled and beguiled; she feels some kind of deep connection with Unn, but does not understand what it means. She is aware, however, that Unn steals the occasional glance in her direction, as if aware of their connection, though she continues to remain detached from Siss and her group of friends. Every day Unn stands alone. She seems to embody, it occurs to Siss, a strangely serene inner strength.

Vesaas might have viewed life as gossamer of renewed promises but never without one; much like the Ice Palace that stood subdued in summer, embracing dissolution but tirelessly raising its head again in winter without exception. Vesaas must have experienced the tingling calmness that a battered palm transfers upon touching a healthy skin; much like how a tumultuous, windy evening of tight-lipped conversation can be the analgesic for months of revitalizing discoveries. Vesaas must have witnessed a beautiful painting becoming priceless with a careless but feisty stroke of brush; much like the reinstating zephyr of souls, that with or without their presence, turn daily life, aromatic. Siss is eleven years old and the most popular girl in her school. An only child, she is also the center of her parents' attention. One day her feelings toward everyone around her change when a new girl named Unn joins Siss' class at school. A lonely girl by nature, Unn is ignored by everyone in the class, except Siss. The girls decide to meet at Unn's house after school on one darkening autumn evening and commence on an electric friendship. Unn reveals to Siss that her mother died of an illness six months earlier and that even at eleven years old she does not know who her father is. Coping with these feelings swirling inside of her, Unn has yet to openly discuss her station in life with anyone, that is except for Siss. Despite being the leader of everyone at school, Siss is at heart lonely as well. It seems divinely ordained that the two girls have been brought together, and now they share a deep secret that not even Unn's Aunt or Siss' parents are privileged to know. Together, the girls appear to be on the cusp of navigating through their teenage years without much angst.

Sex is buried deep at the bottom of this story: the girls are still innocents, only vaguely sensing that there is much that is still beyond their comprehension -- and that is still unspeakable -- and The Ice Palace is also about that attempt to preserve (in pure ice ...) childish innocence. Delve into this author's mind. Meet an author who lived in an isolated village in Telemark, a mountainous region in southern Norway, who loved the countryside so much, he stayed there until his death. Even now people visit the farm where Vesaas lived. I say again, you must feel you are freed. It’s not right for you to go on as you are. It’s not like you. You’re a different person".

Trata muchos temas, pero sobre todo se centra en el duelo, en la pérdida que ahoga, la negación a aceptar lo sucedido y el valor de las promesas dichas. Explora con brillantez los sentimientos de la protagonista: el temor de fallar, de no permitir el paso al olvido y la incapacidad de seguir adelante sin esa persona. Relata un encuentro entre almas gemelas que se ven unidas por una extraña pero sincera conexión que deriva en una amistad inolvidable.You can’t bind yourself to her memory, and shut yourself away from what is natural for you. You would only be a bother to yourself and to others, and no one will thank you for it, far from it. You’re already making your parents unhappy". Though Vessas’s novel The Birds is arguably his finest, The Ice Palace is arguably his most poetic. The tale of Siss and Unn, two eleven-year-old girls living in the hinterlands of Norway, is not merely a tale of childhood friendship, but is also a subtle and palpable excursion into the innocent recesses of sexual exploration." - Mark Axelrod, Review of Contemporary Fiction

The pieces are all set for the magic to start. Siss, the popular leader of her peers at school and the beloved daughter of a well-off family, begins the journey with no return to become Unn, the introverted, mysterious girl, who leads an isolated life with her aunt, wrapped up in an irresistible and unsettling aura. Two gleaming faces in a mirror become one in a radiant moment, memory and dreams are fused into an impossible reality and Unn becomes Siss and Siss becomes Unn, scorching twin souls emerge amidst the implacable coldness of their existence, producing a miracle. Or a curse. For this world is made for the living, and that is a lesson Siss will have to learn if she wants to break free from a heavy burden which is drowning her in the mesmerizing but already thawing chambers of The Ice Palace. Também senti muito a morte da Unn, principalmente por me identificar demais com ela. Aquela parte que aparece o rosto dela congelado e depois corta pra Siss na banheira vai ficar comigo pra sempre.The very next day the new girl skips school and goes to see a giant ice cave formed by freezing water around a waterfall. The girl is never seen again despite days of searching. Is-slottet. - Oslo: De norske bokklubbene, 2002. - 124 p. - (Århundrets bibliotek) - ISBN 82-525-5096-7 (hardcover)