08/06/2018
Olsson (In One Skin) uses the building of the Sydney Opera House as the backdrop for a contemplative story of personal guilt and political upheaval. When Australian announces a draft for Vietnam in 1965, Pearl Keogh, a journalist for the Telegraph, begins a frantic search for the younger brothers she abandoned after their mother’s early death. Swedish artist Axel Lindquist arrives in Sydney to produce a glass sculpture for the new opera house. He struggles with the language, designing an appropriate sculpture, and lingering animosity from others toward Sweden’s neutrality during World War II. Axel and Pearl drift into a relationship, though Olsson’s jarring switch between their points of view and heavy reliance on internal thoughts obscures their bond. Pearl finally tracks down her brothers and learns they have already enlisted, causing her to tumble into guilt-ridden reminiscences. Meanwhile, Axel wanders through Sydney, using his reflections on art and quest to meet the reclusive Opera House architect to distract him from the his emotions surrounding his Swedish resistance fighter father’s disappearance after the war. Olsson juxtaposes Pearl and Axel’s complex feelings about their fractured families and tenuous connection with news of politician’s increasing hostility toward the Opera House project. Readers who do not mind a leisurely paced story will enjoy exploring these historical political tensions and meditations on personal responsibility. (Oct.)
Shell: A Novel
Narrated by Melle Stewart
Kristina OlssonUnabridged — 10 hours, 47 minutes
Shell: A Novel
Narrated by Melle Stewart
Kristina OlssonUnabridged — 10 hours, 47 minutes
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Overview
1965: As the United States becomes further embroiled in the Vietnam War, the ripple effects are far-reaching-even to the other side of the world. In Australia, a national military draft has been announced and Pearl Keogh, an ambitious newspaper reporter, has put her job in jeopardy to become involved in the anti-war movement. Desperate to locate her two runaway brothers before they're called to serve, Pearl is also hiding a secret shame-the guilt she feels for not doing more for her younger siblings after their mother's untimely death.
Newly arrived from Sweden, Axel Lindquist is set to work as a sculptor on the besieged Sydney Opera House. After a childhood in Europe, where the shadow of WWII loomed large, he seeks to reinvent himself in this foreign landscape, and finds artistic inspiration-and salvation-in the monument to modernity that is being constructed on Sydney's Harbor. But as the nation hurtles towards yet another war, Jørn Utzon, the Opera House's controversial architect, is nowhere to be found-and Axel fears that the past he has tried to outrun may be catching up with him.
As the seas of change swirl around them, Pearl and Axel's lives orbit each other and collide in this sweeping novel “that brings the cultural upheaval of 1960s Australia vividly to life, and readers who appreciate leisurely paced, thoughtful literary fiction will savor each word of this emotional story of two people-and a country-reckoning with their past and future” (Booklist).
Editorial Reviews
"Olsson masterfully captures the different cultures [the protagonists] come from...Olsson’s writing is beautiful, captivating, and is enough in itself to recommend this book."
"Olsson’s transformational novel is as inspiring, as moving, as elevating as Utzon’s transformational edifice. In its honoring and celebration of people, place, and principle, Shell sanctifies the greatest of our ideas and being, from love, courage and betrayal to creation and dissent. This book carried me along through stunning sentences to a space beyond of beauty and sadness, the potential of art, and the most moving of human intentions. It’s the kind of book that opens out its readers, making them think and feel. It’s the kind of book I’ll carry with me for all time."
"The story of the construction of the Sydney Opera House, undeniably one of the 20th century’s great buildings, is one fraught with paradoxes and rich with wider context...this is a novel with a sharp eye, a warm heart and sprawling ambitions, painted on the most splendid canvas of all."
"The prose of Shell has a sensory aesthetic and a gentle fluidity, even when skewering Australia’s old guard."
"The China Garden will suit literature lovers who enjoy slow, steady reads with intriguing characters."
"A closely observed, carefully paced and tastefully produced work of fiction."
"Shell is a masterful novel. Olsson brings to vivid life a country at the precipice of self-awareness, at a moment of intellectual and ethical schism that will define its place in the wider world, and she does this brilliantly through intensely moving and personal stories of love and loss, of morality and betrayal. As ethereal, shimmering, and magical as the book’s beating heart, the Sydney Opera House, it is fair to say that Shell shares the architectural masterpiece's majesty."
"War, architecture, guilt, salvation, politics – this book has a little bit of it all...A fascinating look at Australia during the Vietnam War, the creation of the Sydney Opera House, and the ever-present battle between the violence of war and the beauty of art. Recommended."
"Kristina Olsson is such a graceful, wise and perceptive writer. The woman’s massive heart is one big literary taproot feeding all of us answers about the Australian condition."
This narrative of war and hope, architecture and yearning, and old and new world, makes Shell a novel of energy and enlightenment, and, to boot, a source of delightful reading.
"Like a melody that resonates long after the song ends, Shell is one of those rare books that lingers in the reader’s mind weeks after finishing the final page."
"Evocative, learned, and moving."
"A beguiling, original, and beautifully written imagining of Sydney of the sixties. "
A beautifully crafted novel about a fascinating time in our history. There is a luminous precision in every sentence.
"Olsson takes her time with this story, the characters are lovingly developed, the story carefully unfurled. The landscape and weather are also perfectly captured and are an integral part of the novel, almost as characters in their own right."
"A heartwarming and realistic tale."
Praise for Shell:
“A luminous look at a city at a time of change, a time when the building of the Sydney Opera House was a reach for greatness.
"An ambitious canvas, a complex and provocative novel of ideas."
Praise for The China Garden:
"Olsson is a gifted writer with considerable verbal flair."
"Olsson's American debut features lyrical writing that brings the cultural upheaval of 1960s Australia vividly to life, and readers who appreciate leisurely paced, thoughtful literary fiction will savor each word of this emotional story of two people—and a country—reckoning with their past and future."
"An excoriating yet careful memoir of a stolen boy and everything wrought by this act."
Praise for Boy, Lost:
"A compelling story of a family torn apart by poverty and abuse, evocatively told by a gifted writer."
"An intelligent and deeply serious book about lives full of pain."
"Exquisitely written and achingly intimate, this is a significant book which sets a new benchmark for memoir."
"Exquisitely written and achingly intimate, this is a significant book which sets a new benchmark for memoir."
"An excoriating yet careful memoir of a stolen boy and everything wrought by this act."
"Olsson's American debut features lyrical writing that brings the cultural upheaval of 1960s Australia vividly to life, and readers who appreciate leisurely paced, thoughtful literary fiction will savor each word of this emotional story of two people—and a country—reckoning with their past and future."
2018-07-31
It's 1965 in Australia. The Sydney Opera House is being built, and compulsory National Service for men means they could be sent to Vietnam. Both are political hot-button issues.
Pearl Keogh, a journalist, has been relegated to the women's section of her paper because her political bias became obvious when she was seen at rallies opposing Australia's entering the war. Thirty-something Pearl was 14 when her mother died, and the care of much younger siblings fell to her. When her father became emotionally unable to care for the family, Pearl went to a convent and her two brothers, to a nearby orphanage. Pearl lost touch when she got her first professional job and (selfishly, in her mind) stopped visiting her brothers. Later, she was horrified to find they'd run away. Now, at 19 and 20, they run the risk of being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Pearl is determined to prevent this from happening, but first she must find them. She meets Axel Lindquist, a Swedish immigrant glassmaker. When Axel was a child, his father's death by suicide left him feeling that it was his fault. He carries the weight of his past heavily, as does Pearl. They form a bond more for physical pleasure than love and begin to unwrap their pasts for the other's inspection. Through this slow reveal, the reader comes to learn of the burdens they've carried unnecessarily. The book is cerebral rather than plot-driven and moves slowly to its final resolution. Readers who like a sense of forward momentum may feel forced—or perhaps encouraged—to slow down and enter the characters' inner lives. And while that will be worth it for some, others may find the pace too slow to sustain interest.
Olsson's subtle and nuanced tale displays how deeply the past—or at least one's perception of it—informs life in the present.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170810383 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 10/09/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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