Great read! Very interesting exploration of unexpected twists and turns in life, how one makes the best of them. Tells the story of one woman who turned something that could have broken her spirit into an opportunity for a new start full of hope and meaning.

As the book opens we meet Ellinor, whose husband has just died. In her grief she turns to her old friend Anna, and reminisces about the past, their marriages, their triumphs and tragedies and contemplates her present situation. Anna, however, has been dead for many years and was once married to Ellinor’s husband Georg, so it’s a monologue and not a dialogue. It’s an original way to tell the tale, and works very well, as bit by bit the whole back story is revealed. The tone is elegiac and wistful. There are regrets and losses, but also friendship and love. The characters are mostly well-drawn, although I did have trouble really connecting to Ellinor herself. She felt somewhat too disconnected from those around her, and thus, by extension, from the reader. Overall it’s an engaging and moving tale, but I didn’t feel that it was much more than a rather ordinary one. Readable and enjoyable, for sure, but really quite forgettable.

An old woman named Ellinor talks to her dead best friend about her life. That's the whole enchilada. Sounds exciting, huh? Well I just LOVED this book. I was sorry when it was over and I no longer had access to Ellinor's head.

It’s pretty funny that I ended up giving this book 5 enthusiastic stars, because when I started it I was sort of having a tantrum—I couldn’t figure out was going on in the story AT ALL, and the language seemed super stilted, cold, and clunky. I was not seeing any “whole enchilada.” The ingredients didn’t go together. I kept having to reread sentences, shaking my head in frustration. Man did I struggle. I went so far as to write myself a note saying that the cadence of the language absolutely did not fit with the cadence of the language in my head. Ha, don’t ask me what that means, but I was convinced this book and I were not going to be friends.

I even considered abandoning it, to avoid the torture I was sure was ahead of me. But I kept remembering that good friends gave the book high marks, so I kept going. Besides, it was a short novel, I told myself. Before long (we’re talking maybe only 20 pages), I was glued to the page. Suddenly, the language seemed beautiful and flowing, and the storyline pulled me in. Never have I done such a complete and vigorous turnaround, especially in terms of style. How bizarre to at first think the language clunky, and then decide it is smooth and poetic!

I have since reread the previously torturous beginning of the book, and there was absolutely nothing about any “cadence” that was weird. It’s like at first I didn’t have the key to get into the language; I was stuck in a room where they were speaking another tongue.

I did figure out why it had started out being such a torturous read, though. Here are the first two lines, which, of course, now that I understand what’s going on, I think are totally brilliant:

“Now your husband is also dead, Anna. Your husband, our husband.”

When I first read this, my editor self was going nuts. I was doing a literal reading. So wait a minute--Anna’s husband (a separate guy), had died also? That damn “also” really threw me!

When I got to the second line, “Your husband, our husband,” I was WAY confused. What did the author mean by saying “OUR husband?”

The answer to the puzzle is that there is just one guy. That guy is named Georg. Anna had once been married to Georg. After Anna died, Ellinor married Georg. It gets convoluted when you learn that Anna had had an affair with Ellinor’s first husband, Henning. See? Musical relationships!

But enough about my initial confusion. I’m just glad I persevered or I would have missed this wonder of a novel. This is such a beauteous character story of a newly widowed Ellinor, a 70-year-old who is talking to her dead friend, Anna. Complex, introspective, wise, and observant, Ellinor comes alive on the page. She is full of contradictions: she is strong yet fragile, peaceful yet resentful, sassy yet reticent, sad yet happy. She has a need to tell Anna that she knew about the affair, to catch Anna up on how Anna’s kids turned out, to tell her secrets and heartaches, and to forgive. I grew so attached to Ellinor. I always love books that are introspective, full of psychological insights—ones that make us think about people’s motives, insecurities, indecisions. That’s what this book does in spades.

I felt like I was going deep deep deep into Ellinor’s heart and soul. I hovered there, ears tuned, eyes sharp, mesmerized by her story. An ordinary one in most respects, but in the hands of this writer, her life became extraordinary. Every observation she made seemed brilliant. I just wanted to keep reading and reading to see what she'd think about next. Maybe it's just her acute awareness of herself and of the people she loved. I hung on every word, every little bit of her history. It says something that when I picked up the book to search for quotes, I became entranced so thoroughly, I just started re-reading and forgot about my search.

During her years with Georg, Ellinor had been closed up in a way—to keep safe, to keep the peace. She had felt a duty to obey the rules of wife and mother. When she reflects on those days, she does so with some sadness, some anger, some wistfulness. You get the idea that she acted loving toward Georg and his kids, but it also seems like she was just going through the motions, and that beneath the surface was a profound loneliness. I think the deaths of her first husband, Henning, and her best friend, Anna, as well as their secret affair, rattled her to the core, yet she had to survive, move on, seek the security of a relationship (with Georg) that was comforting and peaceful.

Now that Georg has died and she is alone, she can dispense with the world's, her family's, expectations, and truly be free to do what she damn well pleases. Say what she thinks to her sons, be unpredictable, move to a furniture-less, stark apartment in the big city. Not depend on people. Now, she exudes a quiet confidence. Well, not so quiet in one case—she blew up at her step daughter-in-law, Mie, one time. (Although the spew was on the quiet side, it was pointed, intense, and clever.) I was impressed by Ellinor’s straightforward and acerbic anger; I was rooting for her. I felt like Mie deserved it even though I knew little about her. Despite that one blow-up, Ellinor has a very appealing quiet dignity about her.


Occasionally, I could tell that English wasn't the author’s native language. There were subtle stumbles in grammar or sentence structure, but it was very infrequent, almost imperceptible. The language (ha, and yes, the cadence) was glorious. There were no wasted words, no philosophical musings, no sentimentality, no syrup.

Here are some nuggets:

“I have put iodine on their knees. I have blown up in front of them, and I have put a hand on their slight boy shoulders when they were low. I have taught them to look people in the eyes when they say hello, and I have taught them the zodiac.”

“I realized I was burdening her with my own homeless anger.”

“He was angry, and his anger had been accumulating. He had been compelled to deposit it at the bank, since he couldn't get through to me on the cell or the landline phone, and now it was payback time, with interest.”

“It stung in a secret place, to see the three of you together.”

Okay. I’ll stop gushing. Read this book, is all I can say. I’ll be checking out earlier works by Grondahl. Where has he been all my life?

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

I found this short novel so interesting. Ellinor spends the book talking to her husband's dead first wife after his death. Sound unusual? It is but it's also very meaningful. I was often impressed with the translator because it flowed so beautifully, hard to believe it wasn't written in English.
I can happily recommend this one to friends wanting something a little different

Ellinor is alone. After her husband has died, she is alone and reflecting on her life and her happiness. This book is wonderfully written, and despite being a translation, nothing is lost.

Ellinor's journey into her past and reflection on past mistakes are compelling. As I often do when reading, I placed myself as Ellinor and then thought about my own life, and my own mistakes. Is there anything worth telling?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

In the ironically titled Often I Am Happy, the rarely happy Danish housewife Ellinor has recently lost her husband Georg. She begins writing to her long-dead best friend Anna, who also happened to be Georg’s first wife. What emerges are reminisces of a woman who is just now realizing — at age 70-something — how self-effacing and self-sacrificing her life has been. To say more would be to ruin this novel, which resembles The Golden Notebook more than The Dinner. Not a lot of action, but Often I Am Happy proves so revealing of female nature that I was stunned to discover that its author, the prize-winning Jens Christian Grøndahl, is a man. Recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Twelve Books in exchange for an honest review.

"Neither one of us knew how to express our feelings. Grief doesn’t always bring people together, as they say. Whatever we felt was blocked at the thought of the feelings of the other, and we said the most stupid, unimportant things, just to endure each other’s company."
More than five stars to this gentle, mediative novel which explores love, loss, time, and the peculiar turnings of a life with gentleness and sympathy. Ellinor is a wise, but not too wise, observer of the events and passings in her life. An astounding read. I'm going to look for more books by this author.

‘It has dawned on me that human beings were never meant to reconcile their longing with reason, not at the expense of longing.’

Even if we welcome all our guests warmly and live a pretty decent life, most of us shouldn’t expect the gods granting us the wish and privilege requested for by Philemon and Baucis ’Since we have lived out harmonious years together, let the same hour take the two of us, so that I never have to see my wife’s grave, nor she have to bury me.’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VIII:706-710)

Although we all know stories about elderly couples having been together for decades, dying within a few days of each other, many who have the luck to share one’s life enduringly with someone loved, will face living through separation by death, or will leave the beloved one in mourning. The presence of another human being close to you might even sharpen your awareness of mortality. Hodie mihi, cras tibi. Today it's me, tomorrow it will be you. However this might be a morbid thought, that makes it no lesser true. Someone has to be first.

Experts can put it very dryly.‘Widowhood is a normative experience in later life’. For bringing such experiences to life, we are blessed we can to turn to poetry and literature.

Is it still possible to feel something which can hesitantly be designated as ‘happiness’ when one has to go through that ‘normative experience’ twice in one’s life? The story of Ellinor’s life, 70 and having buried a spouse twice, illustrates it is, nor minimising the impact of the experience, nor sentimentalising about it.

‘Apparently nothing is more purifying for people’s self-esteem than to place themselves at the very edge of someone else’s grief and show that they are not at all dizzy. Nobody tells me that life must go on. There is room for wailing, all I have to do is let go. I felt it at the funeral, the too-long-and-significant looks or, to the contrary, a feigned normalcy as if to show me they know very well that no words are adequate anyway. I’m not being fair of course, what are people supposed to do with a bereaved person? They do their best but the trouble is that when it comes to professions of empathy, I’d rather not, whereas I can be sure to be all by myself in the dead of the night, whenever I could use a hug.’

Ellinor returns to the bare essence of life while addressing in thought her friend Anna, the deceased first wife of Ellinor’s second husband, Georg, coming to terms with his recent death and her own past, her family history, her life before and after meeting Anna and Georg. Readjusting to her new role in the life of her stepsons, she detaches herself from relatives and alienating, burdening expectations, selling the family home to move to a small apartment in the city neighbourhood she grew up in, regaining her freedom of speech now it is no longer necessary to keep up appearances or to keep the peace at all costs. In her vulnerability, she finds comfort in her solitude, realising that even in a relationship one cannot or does not share all one’s thoughts and emotions, like she never spoke with Georg about the shame she felt for her foggy descent, or the sorrow about her own childlessness.

‘I thought about our bed at home, how unaccustomed I still was, at night, to the undivided stillness. The linen, the pillowcases, the finely woven cotton. It was time to change. For a few endless, lonely seconds it felt again as if I were swelling inside, to the point of bursting, compact and breathless, and I had to clutch the armrest. It comes when I least expect it. It would be glossing over to say that I am mourning when it is mourning that fills me up, that shapeless lump, growing unrestrainedly. It drives me out of myself, making me gasp, and nobody will ever understand before they themselves lose someone dear to them and feel the pressure. The shapeless, rising mass of grief. No, it is true that one is no longer oneself.’

In sparse and simple, thoughtful prose Jens Christian Grøndahl makes grief and loss tangible through his lucid observations, pinpointing significant details like the speechless recollection of the smell of a beloved, or the awkwardness and shyness of people faced with the grief of another, at the same time creating an intimate and hopeful tale by illustrating how at decisive moments in life, one can leave behind some of the ballast resulting from the sacrifices one made for love - living alienated from one’s roots, in a sleepy suburb, living literally in the house and shoes of a dear friend who’s place one takes – and choose to cherish life again.

The lines of the song Tit Er Jeg Glad by the Danish novelist and poet Bernhard Severin Ingemann (from 1812, put to music by Carl Nielsen in 1917) which open the novel for me perfectly capture the ripping ambiguity of the emotions living through grief, the tightrope walking, illustrating what a tattered word like happiness can mean in this context, how feelings meld within a heavy heart, often tinged with an equivocal rim of the opposite feeling.
‘Often I am happy and yet I want to cry
For no heart fully shares my joy.
Often I am sorrowful yet have to laugh
That no one shall my fearful tear behold. ‘

Now just jump on that bicycle and get that tub of white wall paint Ilse, oust the darkness by translucency, space and light. Yes, it feels pleasurable to do things yourself, dear Ellinor, thank you for inspiring me.

Having read this novel in Dutch first, my honest thanks go to Netgalley, Twelve and the author for the ARC, which enabled me to insert some quotes in English.

This is one of those rare adult books that's realistically presented- honest and tenderly written. The humanity is delicate and tenacious. It's an intimate enduring gem!!!

I 'know' this story... 'really' know it first hand.
I have a question for the author?
"Did you my know my Uncle Buddy who married Ethelyn after his wife died? Do you remember the boys Simon and Charlie, too?
Etheyln and Janice were best fiends for thirty years. After Janice died Buddy asked Etheyn to marry him less than a year after her death. The boys were angry - rebellious... especially Simon. They couldn't stand the idea of another woman taking over their mother's role.

Jen Christian Grondahl wrote a very special book. Perhaps it's not a book for everyone..but for those it is.......this story explores the strengths and weaknesses of human character ---Being an introspective novel, the themes, ( loneliness, sadness happiness, and sometimes all these emotions all at once), are subtle.

This is one of those books that is now part of my DNA. It will resonate with me forever! I think it's simply a brilliant small novel.

BIG THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES!!!
"Often I am happy and yet I want to cry; For no heart fully shares my joy."
--B.S. Ingemann

Such a unique and beautiful way to present a life, through the writing of a woman in her seventies to her long-deceased best friend and the first wife of the husband she has just lost.

The title of this book is deceptively simple, yet truly meaningful. Imagine someone introducing themselves to you with this sentence; what would you expect might follow these words. I hadn't really thought about it before I began reading but I have thought about it a lot since I finished. Ellinor is writing of her life to Anna, long-dead, mother of two sons and wife of Georg. After Anna and Ellinor's husband's deaths, but not not right away, these good friends developed a deeper relationship and Ellinor and Georg married. This is the simple story in some ways. The surface story. But there is so much more.

There is the story of the close friendship of the two couples, the story of the two marriages; then there are the back stories; Ellinor writes of her life. Often I am happy could be her mantra. She seeks out moments of happiness in her life and finds many. She loves and is loved in return but always there is something holding her in another space..... There are secrets.

This is an introspective novel, a woman trying to look back at the whole of her life and learn to live with it all, finally, and find happiness.

I recommend this book to all who like this type of work; it is somewhat different in structure, style and even story. It is one that will leave you thinking about how you define happiness in your own life..

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Short, introspective, sometimes sad, but "often" "happy", this is another book that I've read in the last couple of years with the focus on a person in their later years coming to terms with themselves and reflecting on the life they have led. Ellinor talks to her friend Anna, who was her husband's first wife. The thing is - Anna is not alive. I didn't have a problem with this in the least . I talk to my mother all of the time. I'm not losing it and neither is Ellinor. In my case it just makes me feel better and feel that she is nearby. Ellinor needed someone to tell her story to and to reconcile some things with Anna who used to be her best friend. She's grieving the loss of her husband, their husband actually. In rehashing to Anna their history, we come to know what happened to Anna and how Ellinor came to marry Georg. She tells of how she met her first husband, about her mother and the father she never knew. It becomes somewhat of a here's my life story telling Anna about the parts before they knew each other and after Anna was gone.

The memories of their friendship of the past bring understanding and forgiveness. Perhaps the telling of it, even though to someone who's dead is the catharsis she needed to move forward from her grief, to figure out where she is. What a place to be - at peace with an understanding of your life , at a place where she can express her sadness, her earlier self, tell her stepsons exactly what she thinks . I loved her thoughts on parents and loving each other and the vision she has of her mother and father. A quiet, beautifully written story.

I received an advanced copy of this book and Twelve Books through NetGalley.

OFTEN I AM HAPPY BY JENS CHRISTIAN GRONDAHL

.OFTEN I AM HAPPY BY JENS CHRISTIAN GRONDAHL

This is a beautiful story told by Ellinor to Anna. Georg has just died after being married to Ellinor for over forty years. Anna was Georg's first wife and Ellinor's best friend. Georg, Anna, Ellinor's first husband all share a history. Ellinor writes to Anna and confides in her about her father and mother. She also tells Anna about her twin son's life. She confronts Anna and at the same time shares moments and memories. Details about Ellinor's entire life. Why after forty year's since Anna has died does she feel suddenly compelled to share with Anna?

Ellinor prefers to move away from the house she shared with Georg and Anna's twin boys. She prefers one of the twins's very much over the twin that she lived next door to. Stefan and his wife want Ellinor to stay in the house but she doesn't care for Stefan. She is not lonely. Sometimes she misses Georg. She tells Anna that her years living with Georg outnumber Anna's time married to Georg. Ellinor loves Anna but she doesn't hesitate to tell Anna she hasn't apologized.

This is a quiet meditation of a woman looking back over her life and telling her story. Ellinor tells Anna things she has kept hidden from both husbands. It has been forty years since Anna's death. I wondered why Ellinor didn't tell her story to Georg since she loved him and misses him. My guess is she lived those moments with Georg with his sons and Anna didn't.

Thank you to Net Galley, Jens Christian Grondahl and Hachette Book Group for providing me with my digital copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

When 70 year-old Ellinor’s husband Georg passes, she finds herself alone, lonely and reflecting on the years past, friends who are now gone. Children grown and moved away, not that she could share these thoughts with them. All those whom she could turn to when she had a story or a memory to share, questions needing answers, or simply needed comfort: Gone.

”Love was. Is it no longer? Yes it is, it does not die with the man, but for how long will it flutter by itself, reach out in the empty rooms for the grains of dust in a shaft of sunlight? When does it become the memory of a feeling, no longer the feeling itself?”

In her solitude, she turns to her friend, Anna, to share her thoughts and feelings. Though Anna is among those no longer living, she is the only one whose presence, even if in her thoughts alone, can ease Ellinor’s sorrow, who could ever understand how she feels, or forgive her for her secrets kept. Forgive her for the life she’s lived. Offer comfort, solace, friendship.

Anna was not just Ellinor’s friend, she was her best friend, and she was also Georg’s first wife.

This is a lovely, very introspective book, without a lot of highs and lows. Still, there is an ever-present aura of reflective melancholy. A life lived - but not over yet … and maybe she can summon enough courage, strength to start over in this new place, find new things to fill her days.

While this is a relatively short book, 176 pages, the story feels greater than its size belies, more significant, momentous. Perhaps this is because it feels so genuine, so true, so human, raw, but at the same time there is an understated elegance to this story and how it is relayed. The sparse prose as well the grace with which this grief is tenderly, lovingly handled will be remembered.

”Love doesn’t know, does it? It only has its moment, for as long as it lasts.”


Published – 11 Apr 2017

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Twelve Books

This is a near perfect book. I am so in awe that I have been staring at the screen for a while trying to put my thoughts and feelings into words, preferably coherent ones. Sometimes there comes along a book that feels <i>true</i> in a way that is rarely achieved. It seems like Jens Christian Grøndahl boiled down life and refined it to fit it into this short 176 page long novel.

Recently widowed Ellinor addresses her late best friend (and her late husband's first wife) to talk about her feelings, her life, their friendship, loss, love and everything inbetween. While she knows that Anna cannot hear her, she still finds solace in this one-sided conversation. Her life is an ordinary one but what the author made of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. He chooses just the rights words and phrases to make this story extraordinary while still grounded in reality.

I loved the characters created here; especially Ellinor is a wonderful person and I enjoyed spending time in her head a whole lot. She is introspective and thoughtful, she is witty and lovely, but most of all she just seems so immensely real that I feel like I really got to know her, flaws and strengths and all. Her family feels real in a way that side characters rarely feel as well and while they drove me nuts in parts (as they drive Ellinor nuts as well) I cannot deny knowing people like them.

The circular nature of the narrative structure works so beautifully I am tempted to immediately reread the book as I am sure it would add an even extra layer. Every description is on point and there is no sentence that feels superfluous. The whole book is so tightly woven and sparsely told in just my favourite way. I cannot recommend this book enough!

_____
I received an arc of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Twelve Books in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for that!

"We, who are no longer being loved, must chose between revenge and understanding, and I thought that, yes, of course the tow of you had to drift toward one another.”

This is a very short novel at 176 pages but it’s packed to the punch. It is literary fiction, full of self-reflection. Seventy year old Elinor’s second husband has passed away and we know he was married to another woman first, Anna. Elinor raised this woman’s children, as they were still young boys when tragedy struck. Now with Georg gone and the children grown men with families of their own, she decides to move away to a less prestigious area, one where her more ‘base’ earlier self would have been at home . Soon she is floating in memories of the before and after of meeting the exciting couple, Anna and Georg. The accident was loaded with shocking revelations for both Elinor and Georg, and through the shock of their separate pain they ended up together. Anna was her best friend who she shared so much of herself with, unbeknownst to her she was sharing her husband Henning too. She and Elinor’s first husband (Henning ) were carrying on a secret affair, both so much more alive and happier than Georg or Elinor. The accident robs her of the chance to truly know the whys of it all, and she is left to confront her tangled emotions within. Years pass and still, everything that happened is a fresh wound. Anna is like a shadow that follows Elinor through the years, as she stepped into her life.

I imagine many readers first reaction will be judgement (damning the cheaters) and while Elinor is filled with anger she can’t help but dissect her friend and husband Henning as she faces the things that she too was drawn to with painful clarity. “ I understand him, I really do. I’ve also warmed myself in front of you.” It’s such a painful experience having loved someone so dearly, and knowing that what you found charming and beautiful about your closest friend may well have been the light that drew your own husband to ‘warm himself’ with her. Honesty isn’t kind, and Elinor with her hard scrabble earlier fatherless years and later losses can’t neglect to see past the surface of understanding. “I understood far too much, far too early.” Elinor always felt herself less than Anna. “I can talk and talk once I get started, but you were the profound one. In tune with, well, I wouldn’t even know what with. With something I was never even close to understanding.” It’s not many of us that can think fondly of a friend, or spouse that has betrayed us so terribly, and with unalterable consequences, ones creating a different future than we expected, one we didn’t have a say in. That is love, as Elinor tells us, “we only have each other on loan.”

The subject is tough and while it’s a relaxed rehashing of a painful past, the ache is still fresh in her wise heart. I don’t imagine a young crowd would relate so well, at that age it’s hard to see past one’s own nose, as we age we realize the world isn’t fully in our control, nor are the hearts of those we love. Revenge is harder to grasp at when age offers wisdom we can’t dismiss (even if we wish we could). The original is dutch, this is an English translation released today, April 11, 2017

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