About the Author

Linn Ullmann is a graduate of New York University, where she studied English literature and began work on a Ph.D. She returned to her native Oslo in 1990 to pursue a career in journalism. A prominent literary critic, she also writes a column for Norway’s leading morning newspaper. She lives in Oslo with her husband and their children.

Linn Ullmann’s Stella Descending is available in Anchor paperback.


Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland.

Reviews

“Slim but by no means slight . . . A delicate, haunting portrait . . . Consistently absorbing . . . An elegant stylist with an original voice (and a top-notch translator, Barbara Haveland), Ullmann is especially good at capturing moments of poignancy, often with a trace of gallows humor.” –Bruce Bawer, The New York Times Book Review“A powerful affirmation of the haunting beauty of ordinary human life and death.” –Washington Post Book World“Provocative . . . immensely compelling. Ullmann has an extraordinary talent for exploring relationships between people in love.” —The Baltimore Sun“A work of stunning emotional magnitude . . . Ullmann writes with a wondrously light, deft touch . . . Her pared-down portraits result in real characters who carry all the true-life weight of self-doubt and inner purpose . . . Very moving.”–Kirkus Reviews“Wonderful and chilling . . . Wrenching in its straight-ahead simplicity, lucid in its smooth, elegant translation, Ullmann’s novel resonates with a reader’s inner, subliminal fears of deterioration in the face of death.”–Booklist“Ullmann’s novel is brief, and her style sparse, but the tale is weighty and compelling.”–Library Journal

This slim, grim novel-Ullmann's third-tells a chilly tale charged with the moral ambiguity surrounding euthanasia. Terminal illness stories are often exploited for emotional payoffs, but Ullmann (Stella Descending; Before You Sleep) skirts the sap factor by casting a cold, hard light on her characters. The story begins in a doctor's office, where Johan Sletten, retired journalist and paragon of mediocrity, learns he has six months to live. As his health deteriorates, Johan muses on the major events in his life. His first marriage to Alice was almost cartoonishly unhappy, and resulted in a son he barely tolerates. Two years after Alice is run over by a car, when Johan is 47, he marries Mai, a 30-year-old pediatrician. Despite her brisk manner and penchant for unnecessary lies, she represents everything that is good in Johan's life. Through all of this, one detects the chilly side of Milan Kundera's influence; like him, Ullmann is a sharp chronicler of life's horrible ironies. The trouble is that no larger picture, no wealth of incident or even variety of secondary characters galvanizes this bedroom drama. Worse, the book's unidentified first-person narrator remains shrouded in opaque omniscience and half-amused aphorisms. Ullmann's exclusive commitment to exposing life's banality, combined with her condescending tone, lock the reader out of a story that was forbidding to begin with. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Jan. 27) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

"Slim but by no means slight . . . A delicate, haunting portrait . . . Consistently absorbing . . . An elegant stylist with an original voice (and a top-notch translator, Barbara Haveland), Ullmann is especially good at capturing moments of poignancy, often with a trace of gallows humor." -Bruce Bawer, The New York Times Book Review"A powerful affirmation of the haunting beauty of ordinary human life and death." -Washington Post Book World"Provocative . . . immensely compelling. Ullmann has an extraordinary talent for exploring relationships between people in love." -The Baltimore Sun"A work of stunning emotional magnitude . . . Ullmann writes with a wondrously light, deft touch . . . Her pared-down portraits result in real characters who carry all the true-life weight of self-doubt and inner purpose . . . Very moving."-Kirkus Reviews"Wonderful and chilling . . . Wrenching in its straight-ahead simplicity, lucid in its smooth, elegant translation, Ullmann's novel resonates with a reader's inner, subliminal fears of deterioration in the face of death."-Booklist"Ullmann's novel is brief, and her style sparse, but the tale is weighty and compelling."-Library Journal