Review Summaries

• Readers respond well to the dense sense of place and the gradually deepening family bond. At the same time, the slow-moving narrative can feel too quiet for readers looking for stronger plot momentum.

Reviews

• Ice is an incredibly moving book that colorfully illustrates life in Åland through the joys and hardships experienced in the parsonage of a young pastor and his family arriving in 1946 just after the war. Petter, Mona and Sanna, their daughter, arrive at their new parish, Church Isle in the Örlands, by Postal boat from Åbo on the mainland where Petter has just finished his studies at university. Here he falls in love with the landscape and the people, and they fall in love with him. His wife Mona enjoys the pastoral life that comes along with a country parish in the islands. She instantly throws herself into the work of tending to cows, sheep and chickens. They make new friends and gain special affection for a doctor, the daughter of a Finnish general who had to escape Russia where she had her practice. Due to the circumstances she left her son behind and his fate remains unknown for most of the novel. Part of the story is told from the perspective of “Post Anton” who is the main communication channel between Church Isle, Marienheim, the capital of Åland and Åbo. He shuttles mail, people and their belongings back and forth between the islands and the mainland, often given to supernatural premonitions that have an eerie way of coming true. Ulla-Lena Lundberg is a cherished author among the Swedish speaking citizens of Finland. She was born in Åland in the town of Kökar, and has travelled extensively. She writes magnificently in a manner that draws you into each and every character and really makes you feel like one of them. My own family originates from Åland and I have had the pleasure of visiting these Finnish Islands a couple times in my life. This added to the fascination I had with the book, and is responsible for alerting me to it. A Swedish pastor and friend of mine told me about it a couple years ago before it was in English. I looked for it but there is difficulty getting Swedish books to the states especially if they are new. I truly loved Petter’s theological bent, and the theological history and understanding interweaved into the book, as well as his own pastoral heart and dealings with people. Petter has a warm faith full of love for God and God’s people, and a slight aversion to pietistic revivals born out of his own experience with them. He would rather have the people focus on Christ and forgiveness than their own righteousness. I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating the pastoral profession. Of course, the book takes its title from the sea ice that surrounds the islands and brings the story to its tragic conclusion. The ice is a huge influence in the life of the islanders who never venture out onto the ice without a knife and an ice pick.

• A quiet wonderful book set in islands between Finland and Sweden just after WW2. A rich cast of characters and a celebration of humanity doing the simple things in life

• This is told in the old-fashioned style of family saga epic, about a young couple, Mona and Petter Kummel who arrive at an small group of islands located to the west of the Ålands - which lie between Sweden and Finland and whose main industry is fishing - called the Örlands. It is set in 1946, just after the Winter War and Continuation War with Russia. He is a young novice pastor recently ordained and she his wife, eager to settle into their first home together. There's the very young daughter, Sanna, whom we suspect is based on the author, herself. The novel opens with their arrival at the parsonage. We meet the locals. There's Adele, who is a stalwart of the committee, there's the mysterious Russian refuge doctor with a dark secret, there's the unhappily married Lydia, the verger, the organist and the stubborn fishermen who still believe in pre-Christian forces of nature. In a way, it is a tale of a twee community whose days are filled with the west islanders in rivalry with the east islanders as they thrash out policies at innumerable committee meetings. In the meantime, Pastor Petter is studying hard for his pastoral exams and trying to integrate old ways with the new. His wife Mona is of sturdy farming stock and sets about milking her own cows and keeping hens and sheep. A hidden character is the weather. A harsh element that brings wind and ice. Underneath the gentility of the coffee and buns, Lundberg succeeds in getting to the heart of what people really think and feel and what makes them tick. It is incredibly skillfully done. This true life. The reader who reads to the end will be well rewarded. I shall not be the one to spoil it. A wonderful humdinger of a book, it reminded me a little of Bo Giertz book, which tells of a young pastor, also during the same era and his tribulations Hammer of God and even Strindberg's tales of the skerries and the fisher folk. Thoroughly absorbing, right to the end. I absolutely LOVED it.

• This is not so much a novel as a fictional journal or memoir. It recounts the life of a young Lutheran priest and his wife and child when he moves to a remote Finnish island community to take up the role of pastor. The daily incidents which punctuate their unfamiliar and unhurried lifestyle are presented as they occur. This in itself is a problem for the author, for it means the book lacks the narrative drive of a firm plot. It starts slowly and steadily builds to a snail’s pace. But plot and narrative are not everything. If the author can bring a group of fascinating characters to life and make us believe in them, this will often sustain a slow story. Does the author succeed in this here? Well, yes… and no. The characters of Petter the priest and his wife Mona are outstandingly well drawn; I felt for them and was immersed in their problems. Unfortunately the other characters were less effectively written. The author tended to introduce them using character descriptions, which were not always reinforced by their subsequent words and actions. Also disconcerting was the attempt to put adult thoughts and feelings into the minds of the couple’s baby and toddler. As well as a journal, this is also a book very much themed on theology. Three points of view are presented: the Christian faith of the preacher, the lingering superstitious beliefs in the old legends held by the postman, and the atheistic views of the Russian refugee doctor on the island. The author chooses not to concentrate on the differences between them, but rather to search for an accommodation that allows a place for all three. Each acknowledges that the others maybe have some sort of point. This is an admirable sentiment, but it is another factor in removing conflict and tension in the book, and contributes towards its rather bland feel. For me, the main achievement of this work is the way it evokes the atmosphere of the setting, the cold, the harshness of the life and the isolation. This is not a bad book, and will be enjoyed by many. Women will be attracted by the characterisation of the two main characters. It is a book that almost makes it for me, but not quite. James Gault is the author of The Redemption of Anna Petrovna Best Intelligence Teaching Tania Ogg

• Slow moving first half that captures the pace of life on a remote Finnish island. Beautifully descriptive and evocative of a land of seasonal contrasts and a small town population that do not like change. It finishes with a twist int the tale a gripping incident on the ice around which all life is centered in the winter. I really savored and enjoyed this read.

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