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.

Like the other children Siss is curious about the new girl, and she feels a sort of connexion to her. Even in its conclusion there are obvious comparisons to the sexual act: when last we see her: "She wanted to sleep; she was languid and limp and ready". Is-slottet. - Oslo: De norske bokklubbene, 2002. - 124 p. - (Århundrets bibliotek) - ISBN 82-525-5096-7 (hardcover) A life is made of promises; some made to self, some to others. And like a diffident fuel, it comes into play when life derails to reserve. Aren’t all the promises tested at the brink of uncertainty? Aren’t all the promises repainted at the threshold of patience? Aren’t all the promises questioned at the gates of survival? The way the children treat each other is, in particular, well-captured, the fumbling efforts and small gestures and big meanings and sudden about-faces effortlessly woven into the story.Vesaas' beste. - Oslo: Gyldendal, 2006. - 617 p. - (Forfatternes beste). - Contains the three novels Kimen, Fuglane and Is-slottet as well as selected short stories and poems. - ISBN 82-05-34894-4 (hardcover) The Ice Palace / translated by Elizabeth Rokkan. - First edition of first English translation. - London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1966. - 176 pp. (hardcover) When four eyes full of gleams and radiance beneath their lashes, filling the looking glass, shine into each other, words become redundant. A disturbing meeting, charged with powerful silences and unsaid secrets, unites the girls beyond humane nature in an unbreakable bond, frozen in time.

Siss insists on being part of it -- and as someone who talked to Unn so recently they keep asking her whether or not Unn might have said something to indicate where she went, or why. Whole class text- reading and comprehension. Rich descriptions and evocative language used to create atmosphere/tension. Fairytale feeling. News reportage/police announcements: 'wanted' poster for Starjik with physical descriptions, details of why he is wanted. 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". Yet this simple story has touched me deeply with its eerie beauty, its sadness and especially with the things left unsaid, unexplained: the silences, the unfinished gestures, the loneliness, the indifference and the mystery of winter landscape to the incursions of the human intruders upon its domain.

see Agnes Bolsø’s article “The Politics of Lesbian Specificity” in Queering Norway, Routledge, 2009, p. 49)

Vesaas’ book is a rare achievement. I have no feeling to stand up and cheer as I do when I read something extraordinary-the more I write this review the more I understand how extraordinary, The Ice Palace, is. The short simple style unfolding the tale feels light? Slight? But no, that is what sets this apart It is only after living through it that seeping through the simplicity is something explosive and at the core of meaning, at the core of otherness, mortality, the unrelenting indifferent passage of time.

About Bobby Seal

This book is a set in a country with long dark and cold winters and Starjik The Winter King travels across the land during winter taking children from their beds at night. No one who has set out on a rescue before has ever been seen alive again. Here we follow the adventure of the boy Ivan as he attempts to rescue his younger brother who has been kidnapped by Starjik. It takes courage and experience to take the limb, or aortic chamber, and snap it off, knowing the shards of ice will splinter and wound. Knowing, each time you try to wiggle that finger or listen to the incomplete thud of your heartbeat, you will painfully remember what is missing. Instead of going to school Unn goes to a local natural wonder, the waterfall that slowly freezes over in the winter, creating a fabulous ice-palace: Parts of the novel are difficult to read, as Vesaas leads his young character down a road of no return, but it is a remarkably powerful evocation of the human condition.

The Ice Palace ( Nynorsk: Is-slottet) is a novel by the Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas, first published in 1963. It has been translated to English by Peter Owen Publishers, London, and was scheduled for reissue with them in Christmas of 2017 in their Cased Classics series. [ citation needed] Vesaas received The Nordic Council's Literature Prize for the novel in 1964. [1] Plot [ edit ]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. Read it - Examine the ice palace on the cover of the book and the picture of a girl. Use your imagination and think of imagery and symbolism, snow, ice, water, new seasons, mental trauma, the mirror that reveals all, two eleven year old girls, an outsider and the other the leader of a group at school. The catalyst is the ice palace.