The Ice Palace

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
Intense but calm, this stunning novel from Norwegian poet Tarjei Vesaas is the debatably the best book I’ve read all year. Two 11-year old girls, Siss and Unn, start a friendship that’s cut short when Unn disappears into the “ice palace” – a giant crystal structure formed by a frozen waterfall. Vesaas captures Siss’s struggle with loss (and fidelity to the memory of her friend) with a poetic simplicity, and renders her 11-year-old consciousness with uncanny precision. What struck me most about this novel was Vesaas’s ability to immerse me in an unfamiliar atmosphere - the dark, icy landscape of rural Norway (where it snows when it’s warm) – so completely and vividly. An absolutely beautiful book.