Op een eiland waar bijna niemand woont, heeft elke aankomst gevolgen, zelfs de aankomst van een simpele melkboot.

"{B}eing a mother really turned her into a wreck."

The saga of Ingrid Barroy and her family continues when Ingrid and her daughter Kaja return to the island after their journey across Norway and beyond in an attempt to discover what happened to Alexander, the Russian POW Ingrid sheltered on the island during the war. In addition to Kaja, Ingrid becomes the adoptive mother of sorts of a young boy Matthias. Matthias's mother has disappeared and his mother's husband, who believes, as does all the town, that Matthias is actually the son of a German soldier who was stationed there during the war, abandons the boy on Ingrid's island. A large part of the story involves trying to discover Matthias's actual parentage, and Ingrid's fears that he may be taken from her. These story lines resonate with the trauma and damage still left from WW II, where some villagers collaborated with the Germans and some did not.

There is also of course the ongoing rhythm of day to day life on the island, and the lives of the fishermen who go to sea each year and the dangers they face. The island is not immune to tragedy.

I enjoyed the book, though maybe not as much as the others. I will say that I don't know how it could be read unless you have read the previous three books. The translator in a short forward briefly described what had gone before, but even with that "refresher" I had difficulty at times remembering who was who and what had happened previously. It was like stepping into the middle of a plot driven movie and trying to follow the story.

3 stars ( )

There is a complicated simplicity in the Barroy Chronicles, this lovely saga of life on a tiny Norwegian island inhabited by one family. Ingrid has inherited the island when her parents died and had fallen in love with an injured Russian refugee from WWII who had washed up on Barroy in a shipwreck, only to have him leave her pregnant with a daughter, Kaja, as he tries to return to his homeland after the war. Her aunt Barbro, a bit simple-minded, has also had a child by a Swedish sailor, and as other children are brought to the island during and after the war, they have grown, married, and had children. A little boy, Mathias, was brought to Barroy from the mainland when his father and mother both disappeared, and he becomes beloved by Ingrid and Kaja as he adjusts to life on the island. Mathias' substantial inheritance, and his mother's reemergence as the lover of a Norwegian German sympathizer, who is Mathias' real father, creates drama on the quiet island. But the worst is yet to come. ( )