Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Unquiet
Linn Ullmann
Review by Priscilla Comen
Unquiet
Linn Ullmann
Review by Priscilla Comen
Unquiet, by Linn Ullmann, is the story of the father, in his 80s, and the girl, his daughter. She is the youngest of nine children. The girl tells this story in the third person, from her point of view.
Every afternoon at three P.M., they watch a film. The children must arrive promptly at ten minutes before three. The father drives a red jeep too fast and forgets the names of things. In the second section, the father has died and she carries the recording of his voice in her purse. When father was 87, he and the daughter decided to write a book together. They planned to take the jeep and go on a book tour. And so begins this memoir/fiction piece on growing old and growing up.
After he dies, she remembers only a few things about him. He would have an omelet every day at 1 P.M. He had three foundations named after him, his face was on a postage stamp and on bank notes. This takes place in Norway. The daughter buys a good digital recorder. She, her husband, and their daughter drive to Hammers to interview the father. He is eating his omelet. He has several women to care for him, one comes after another leaves. She listens to the recording on the day he dies. The sound quality is terrible. She describes the father in detail: darned wool socks, plaid shirt, brown trousers. They sit in his study/ His wife, her mother, Ingrid, has died months before. He mourns but doesn’t like to say good-bye. So he doesn’t. Author Ullmann moves deftly from little girl to 43 year old woman. We hear her thoughts, see her emotions as she sees her father aging.
The daughter has five blue notebooks of Pappa’s. They are filled with notes and old family photos. She practiced ballet in the garage, her brother studied German with Pappa in his study. The girl’s Mamma goes to America and leaves the girl with her Nanna. Mamma says she will call at a certain time. When she doesn’t, the girl worries that she is dead. Mamma thinks the girl is too skinny. She gets sent to the school psychologist because she was screaming in the school bathroom. The girl moves to the U.S. with her Mamma. They live in a yellow house with big tall trees. The girl wants a cat, so they go to the cat breeder’s house. It smells of cat piss and there is cat hair on all the furniture. The daughter wants to leave. Detail follows detail.
As the father ages, he tries to write the daughter’s name, Anna. His hand shakes. She finishes the letters. They make a calendar. Some days he wants to be left in peace. The father, who was a screenwriter, loses the language. He “lives in a confusion of tongues.” Tying his shoes becomes a problem. He writes on the walls of his room with a black marker. At the end of his life, he planned everything: chose his gravesite, wrote and revised his will. But he thinks he’d like to go to the city, to a concert, to a rehearsal, to the theater. He misses all that. Towards the end, he forgets everything: the tapes, the project, his daughter. And she forgets the funeral except for the roses on his coffin.
Find this loving memoir of father and daughter on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.
Every afternoon at three P.M., they watch a film. The children must arrive promptly at ten minutes before three. The father drives a red jeep too fast and forgets the names of things. In the second section, the father has died and she carries the recording of his voice in her purse. When father was 87, he and the daughter decided to write a book together. They planned to take the jeep and go on a book tour. And so begins this memoir/fiction piece on growing old and growing up.
After he dies, she remembers only a few things about him. He would have an omelet every day at 1 P.M. He had three foundations named after him, his face was on a postage stamp and on bank notes. This takes place in Norway. The daughter buys a good digital recorder. She, her husband, and their daughter drive to Hammers to interview the father. He is eating his omelet. He has several women to care for him, one comes after another leaves. She listens to the recording on the day he dies. The sound quality is terrible. She describes the father in detail: darned wool socks, plaid shirt, brown trousers. They sit in his study/ His wife, her mother, Ingrid, has died months before. He mourns but doesn’t like to say good-bye. So he doesn’t. Author Ullmann moves deftly from little girl to 43 year old woman. We hear her thoughts, see her emotions as she sees her father aging.
The daughter has five blue notebooks of Pappa’s. They are filled with notes and old family photos. She practiced ballet in the garage, her brother studied German with Pappa in his study. The girl’s Mamma goes to America and leaves the girl with her Nanna. Mamma says she will call at a certain time. When she doesn’t, the girl worries that she is dead. Mamma thinks the girl is too skinny. She gets sent to the school psychologist because she was screaming in the school bathroom. The girl moves to the U.S. with her Mamma. They live in a yellow house with big tall trees. The girl wants a cat, so they go to the cat breeder’s house. It smells of cat piss and there is cat hair on all the furniture. The daughter wants to leave. Detail follows detail.
As the father ages, he tries to write the daughter’s name, Anna. His hand shakes. She finishes the letters. They make a calendar. Some days he wants to be left in peace. The father, who was a screenwriter, loses the language. He “lives in a confusion of tongues.” Tying his shoes becomes a problem. He writes on the walls of his room with a black marker. At the end of his life, he planned everything: chose his gravesite, wrote and revised his will. But he thinks he’d like to go to the city, to a concert, to a rehearsal, to the theater. He misses all that. Towards the end, he forgets everything: the tapes, the project, his daughter. And she forgets the funeral except for the roses on his coffin.
Find this loving memoir of father and daughter on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.