Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Stockholm : Bonnier, 1984 ;
Description
The Christmas Oratorio begins in the 1930s, when a wife and mother accidentally killed. The grieving family abandons its home and moves to another town, hoping to start afresh, but finds that its emotional burdens have emigrated with it.
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Well, the Nordic reputation for gloom and depression and sadness and cheerlessness is safe again, thank goodness. I thought a book with Christmas in the title, especially a piece of Christmas music that's renowned for being, if not jolly, then upbeat could make the reader smile! No, no, not part of
Death. Lots of that, and only some of it physical. The psychic deaths of everyone in this book take place in locales that are lovely to look at and lushly described, as if to counterpoint the misery and sadness the humans in these places carry around with them.
I still think it would be delightful to visit Sweden, and one day before I die I WILL see New Zealand in the flesh so to speak, despite the author's best efforts to make me perceive these places as sinks of hopelessness and the futility of human happiness.
Since the work is a translation, I have no idea if the writing is good or not, so I make no comment thereon. But this is one gloomfest of a novel, and I will never, ever pick it up again. Should anyone offer me another novel by Tunstrom, I will politely decline the opportunity to make myself wretchedly depressed by reading it, tear-dampened kleenex crumpled in one clenched fist and suicidally large dose of pills in the other, searching desperately for a glimmering of a reason not to end this wasted, purposeless thing I've not-so-laughingly called my life.
So, on balance, not really recommended.
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the character of Tunstrom's novel, no smiling, no no, none of that!Death. Lots of that, and only some of it physical. The psychic deaths of everyone in this book take place in locales that are lovely to look at and lushly described, as if to counterpoint the misery and sadness the humans in these places carry around with them.
I still think it would be delightful to visit Sweden, and one day before I die I WILL see New Zealand in the flesh so to speak, despite the author's best efforts to make me perceive these places as sinks of hopelessness and the futility of human happiness.
Since the work is a translation, I have no idea if the writing is good or not, so I make no comment thereon. But this is one gloomfest of a novel, and I will never, ever pick it up again. Should anyone offer me another novel by Tunstrom, I will politely decline the opportunity to make myself wretchedly depressed by reading it, tear-dampened kleenex crumpled in one clenched fist and suicidally large dose of pills in the other, searching desperately for a glimmering of a reason not to end this wasted, purposeless thing I've not-so-laughingly called my life.
So, on balance, not really recommended.
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Awards
Nordisk Råds litteraturpris (Nominee — 1984)
Language
Original publication date
1983
Physical description
328 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
9100463086 / 9789100463083
Other editions
Juloratoriet : roman by Göran Tunström (Paper Book)