I am Dina. Jacob always walks beside me. He is large and silent and drags the foot they had no chance to remove. The smell is gone. Jacob does not disappear, as Hjertrud sometimes does. He is a steamboat without steam. He drifts with me. Calmly. Heavily.
Hjertrud is a crescent moon, sometimes waxing, sometimes waning. She floats outside me.
(p. 169)
Dina's Book, by Herbjørg Wassmo, is a 455-page doorstopper. Well, not really a proper doorstopper, but too heavy for me to carry to work. Let's get one thing straight: the movie absolutely does not do it justice. Characters, events, voice, there just wasn't enough room for all of it.
In Kate Bornstein's terminology, Dina is one hell of a gender outlaw. She doesn't natter about gender identity or patriarchal oppression or anything, but she walks the walk in some pretty big ways: She smokes cigars, rides astride while wearing pants, manages Reinsnes as an unmarried widow for years (with more of a head for business than some of its male masters had), and generally sees no reason to act like a proper, circumspect lady. Bornstein characterizes gender outlaws as "delightful" and "attractive", and Dina has this in spades; the breasts and thighs and soul she never bothers to hide have most of the book's male characters panting after her.
What makes her story so tragic, though, is that she's also completely batshit insane, as evidenced by the first-person snippets strewn through the book; spending several years unparented and then several more with a father who hated her, after causing her mother's accidental death, left quite the psychic mark on her. The adult Dina we see ruling Reinsnes is called "hard" by several other characters, and indeed she rarely seems to empathize with anyone (except, perhaps, Stine, the wet nurse she sort of befriends in her own batshit way and later marries off to her first love). Her cruelty to poor, sweet Tomas had me feeling so deeply for the poor dear, and Wassmo's constant characterization of their relationship as unhealthy and demented rather stayed with me; the lifelong first love whose object is haughty and beautiful is normally the stuff of epic romance. Except for the part where the reality of it is probably more like this, Tomas obsessing and puppyishly waiting for Dina as she exploits him.
Speaking of the romantic relationships, I now know how shippers feel. I never bought Dina and Leo's relationship, in the book or in the movie. I spent the movie wanting her paired with Tomas; in the book, where her awful exploitation of him is much more obvious, I kind of wanted her with Anders. Tomas being married off to Stine outraged me until I read Wassmo's description of their happy, healthy, mature marriage and the love they came to bear for each other.
The book is the first in a trilogy, and I'm given to understand that at least the second book has also been translated into English; I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
Hjertrud is a crescent moon, sometimes waxing, sometimes waning. She floats outside me.
(p. 169)
Dina's Book, by Herbjørg Wassmo, is a 455-page doorstopper. Well, not really a proper doorstopper, but too heavy for me to carry to work. Let's get one thing straight: the movie absolutely does not do it justice. Characters, events, voice, there just wasn't enough room for all of it.
In Kate Bornstein's terminology, Dina is one hell of a gender outlaw. She doesn't natter about gender identity or patriarchal oppression or anything, but she walks the walk in some pretty big ways: She smokes cigars, rides astride while wearing pants, manages Reinsnes as an unmarried widow for years (with more of a head for business than some of its male masters had), and generally sees no reason to act like a proper, circumspect lady. Bornstein characterizes gender outlaws as "delightful" and "attractive", and Dina has this in spades; the breasts and thighs and soul she never bothers to hide have most of the book's male characters panting after her.
What makes her story so tragic, though, is that she's also completely batshit insane, as evidenced by the first-person snippets strewn through the book; spending several years unparented and then several more with a father who hated her, after causing her mother's accidental death, left quite the psychic mark on her. The adult Dina we see ruling Reinsnes is called "hard" by several other characters, and indeed she rarely seems to empathize with anyone (except, perhaps, Stine, the wet nurse she sort of befriends in her own batshit way and later marries off to her first love). Her cruelty to poor, sweet Tomas had me feeling so deeply for the poor dear, and Wassmo's constant characterization of their relationship as unhealthy and demented rather stayed with me; the lifelong first love whose object is haughty and beautiful is normally the stuff of epic romance. Except for the part where the reality of it is probably more like this, Tomas obsessing and puppyishly waiting for Dina as she exploits him.
Speaking of the romantic relationships, I now know how shippers feel. I never bought Dina and Leo's relationship, in the book or in the movie. I spent the movie wanting her paired with Tomas; in the book, where her awful exploitation of him is much more obvious, I kind of wanted her with Anders. Tomas being married off to Stine outraged me until I read Wassmo's description of their happy, healthy, mature marriage and the love they came to bear for each other.
The book is the first in a trilogy, and I'm given to understand that at least the second book has also been translated into English; I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
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