Inge & Mira - Hardcover

Fredriksson, Marianne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752837818 ISBN 13: 9780752837819

Publisher: Orion, 2000

Synopsis

Inge is tall and cool and Mira is petite and dynamic. When they meet, each is attracted by something special and different about the other. But friendships based on the attraction of opposites can be stormy, and theirs is no exception.

Blonde Inge is a native of Sweden, while dark Mira has fled there to escape the living hell of Chile at the time of the military coup led by General Pinochet. They are brought together by their mutual love of plants, but this gentle pastime is soon overshadowed by the terrible legacy of Mira¿s past. It is a legacy that will reach out to touch many lives, including those of Inge and Mira¿s children.

Bestselling Swedish author Marianne Fredriksson has again created a totally involving story. Written with sympathy and insight and sparkling with unexpected humour, INGE & MIRA is a deeply moving tale of lives haunted by past violence.

About this title

Review:

There is a stripped down quality to Marianne Fredriksson's Inge and Mira, a careful paring away of language, until only the essence of an emotion or thought is left. The novel tells the story of an intense friendship between two very different women, the Inge and Mira of the title: "Each had been allotted her own climate: long, dark winter nights to one, days of burning sunshine to the other. One woman was a sceptic who put her trust in reason; and the other talked intimately with God every day." Swedish Inge is tall, blonde, reserved and Mira is dark and intense, haunted by her memories of abuse and degradation in Pincohet's Chile. Inge's emotional trauma is of the romantic kind, a failed marriage to an alcoholic. The women meet at a garden centre and, after a period of reluctant assessment, they become close. Inge, horrified by Mira's account of her life, decides to help her trace her daughter, one of the many who "disappeared" in the political upheaval; the attempt also reveals some disturbing information about Inge's ex-husband.

The story is a powerful one. In some instances the bare-bones language works well, the simple sentences shock and provoke: "As a child I played on the banks of river Mapocho and now it was running red with blood. A constant stream of dead bodies came floating along." At other times, Fredriksson's staccato tone, translated from the Scandinavian, seems emotionless, almost clichéd. Consequently, the simplistic quality of the prose often strains to convey the complexity of issues raised in Inge and Mira. --Eithne Farry

Book Description:

Women, friendship, the presence of the past, the search for identity: a powerful, evocative saga by the world bestselling Marianne Fredriksson.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0752837818
• ISBN 13: 9780752837819
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 206