Anne Østby

A group of female Norwegian retirees, who haven’t been friends since high school fifty years ago, end up living together on a cocoa plantation in Fiji.

It’s refreshing to read a book about people in their 60s/70s (particularly women) who are still living their lives, learning new things, and having adventures. It’s true-to-life and should be more frequently represented in art and literature. Unfortunately, that’s the only nice thing that can be said about Pieces of Happiness.

There are two main reasons why this book fails.

First of all, a lot of the characters’ behaviors and actions are just so thoroughly unrealistic that the book ends up coming across as nonsensical and ridiculous—even for a work of fiction.

The main premise of the whole story itself defies logic. Women who have lived in Norway their entire lives abandon everything they have ever known, fly halfway around the world to start over in an unknown country, and go to live in someone else’s home—just because they get a random note from someone they haven’t seen in 50 years? Yeah, that’s believable.

What’s even more unbelievable is that a loving daughter would acquiesce to sending her struggling, dementia-suffering mother across the globe to live with people who are essentially strangers in a remote area of the Pacific without access to reasonable healthcare facilities. I don’t even let my own mother walk through a parking lot by herself if I can help it—& she’s much younger than these characters and in perfect health. Any child treating her beloved and ailing mother this way just defies reason.

Even more unreasonable is Lizbeth’s reaction to being assaulted. While walking home one night, she is mugged at knifepoint by a local thug who wants to buy a pair of fancy rugby shoes. Lizbeth has been attacked and robbed…what does she do? Does she contact the authorities? No. Does she become a nervous wreck and require therapy? No. Does she do anything reasonable? No. All she does is start sexually fantasizing about the goon who victimized her. What??? Outrageous doesn’t even begin to describe it! It’s a sad reality that many men just assume that women are attracted to men who harass and brutalize them…and women all over the world are forced to deal and suffer with the consequences of this erroneous assumption on a daily basis. In this case, the fact that the author who promotes this distorted and disturbed way of thinking is herself a woman makes this subplot all the more vile and reprehensible.

The second reason this book fails is because none of the characters are particularly sympathetic. Almost all of the main characters are victims of some form of domestic abuse; oddly, they all actively participate—and, in some cases, even revel—in their abuse.

Lizbeth tolerates a husband who openly humiliates her, verbally abuses her, and destroys her relationships with her own children simply because he is wealthy and enables her to live the lifestyle she always wanted.

Sina goes to work for the man who raped her at their high school prom, and then proceeds to fall victim to financial abuse at the hands of her own son. And, by the end of the book when she has supposedly learned her lesson and stood up to her deadbeat son, she is still doling out money to support him!

And Kat, the recent widow who invites all of the other women to come live with her in Fiji, is even worse. She spends years idolizing an abusively controlling, older ‘husband’ and following him around the world doing ‘community projects’, denying herself the children she wanted, and pretending he was always thinking of her. Purchasing the cocoa plantation was a vanity project on his part, but he went out of his way to convince her he was doing it all for her—even going so far as to name the place Kat’s House in her ‘honor’.
Eventually, Kat discovers the idealized relationship she has concocted in her mind is a lie…the paragon of virtue she has deified her entire adult life has actually fathered an illegitimate daughter with one of the native women and refuses to acknowledge the child. When Kat finally confronts him, he has the nerve to walk out on her and dismiss her as "hysterical" and, therefore, beneath his notice—how dare she bother him and throw his own vices in his face! Does Kat finally grow up and realize that she has lived most of her life deluded and disrespected by this man? No, she continues remembering him with dreamy fondness. The book actually ends with Kat apologizing to HIM via a traditional Fijian ceremony…and with a newborn being named after him. Yikes…these women just love being victims & it makes them—and consequently the book—very unpleasant.… (mehr)

Kat es una mujer de 66 años que desde que acabó el instituto ha viajado, junto con su marido Niklas, por países como Afganistán
o la India realizando labores de ayuda humanitaria. Tras enviudar decide ponerse en contacto con sus amigas de la universidad e invitarlas a pasar una temporada con ella en su casa de Fiji, que cuenta con una plantación de cacao de varias hectáreas.
Las vidas de las cinco amigas no podrían ser más distintas. Sina se quedó embarazada después de acabar el instituto y decidió tener el bebé; Lisbeth se casó con Harald, un hombre rico, y su vida ha girado alrededor de dietas imposibles y tablas de ejercicios; Maya, también viuda, tiene una hija que está muy pendiente de su estado de salud, cada vez más preocupante; e Ingrid, una contable soltera que desea sacar a la aventurera que lleva dentro. Las cuatro deciden aceptar la invitación de su amiga. Una vez en Fiji, intentan retomar una amistad que lleva mucho tiempo en segundo plano, eclipsada por prioridades familiares y profesionales. Poco a poco, las amigas descubren cómo ha sido la vida de las demás y los secretos que llevan años callándose, y consiguen vivir momentos de felicidad.… (mehr)

Norwegian expat Kat has lived all over the world with her husband Niklas. She’s a widow now, and living on a cocoa plantation in Fiji. On impulse, she sends an invitation to four high school friends to join her in Fiji and live out their senior years caring for each other. Amazingly, Sina, Maya, Ingrid, and Lisbeth all agree to the proposal. Each one of the women brings psychological baggage with her, and this plays out over the course of the novel.

This book reminded me of all the reasons I usually avoid women’s fiction. I wanted to read a Hallmark movie and escape to a Pacific island for a few hours. I ended up with Dr. Phil instead. The women interacted in pairs, but never really as a group. Readers spend most of the time inside the womens’ heads as they think about past regrets and future worries. I found Ingrid especially disturbing as she seems to suffer from a dissociative disorder, with an alternate personality she calls “Wildrid.” I did enjoy the narration by Jilly Bond, whose voice reminded me very much of Orlagh Cassidy’s Maisie Dobbs.… (mehr)