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What with the nasty cold starting to hit me from Boxing Day onwards, I never got around to squeeing here about my Yuletide Madness gift! That must be corrected, because it was wonderful - even though the chances of any of my followers knowing the fandom are probably tiny.
Here it is:
Totentanz
Fandom: Skuggserien | The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe
Characters: Rosilda Falck af Stenstierna, Arild Falck af Stenstierna
Words: 315
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Living in Rosengåva is almost not like living at all.
The story is lovely, but before I say more about it, let me write about this book series. It's one of the beloved books/series of my heart, one that I've been reading and rereading since I was about 11, and has shaped my literary tastes and fascinations and thoughts more than I can even understand. I don't know what languages it's been translated into - the original is in Swedish, and I've mostly been reading it in Finnish translation. It consists of four books by the Swedish author Maria Gripe, telling a story of families and secrets, growing up and much more, set in early 1900s Sweden. They're historical novels that don't read like typical historical novels but focus on the hearts and minds and interactions of the characters, while the age and place they live in influence them greatly. The series is known as Skuggserien - the Shadow Series - because each of the book titles includes the word shadow, and shadows are a constant theme of the books - in the form of secrets and hidden things, dreams and fancies, dark places, long shadows cast by the past, and more than I can explain here.
They've got many elements of Gothic fiction, while going my deeper and psychologically truer than any Gothic fiction I've read; I only understood in adulthood that this is where my love for mysterious houses, family secrets, hidden identities, secret sisters, mysterious pasts, dreamy gardens, burning houses, written secrets, dark corridors and all that originates from - and why I always yearn for much more depth than just the outer trappings, because these books already gave it to me when I was very young. They're beautifully written, deep and complex, and though they were accessible to 11-year-old me (I was precocious; I think the intended target group is a bit older), they've got at least as much to offer over 20 years later. The books fascinatingly walk along the border between realism and fantasy, and though the events never cross over to overtly supernatural, you have the sense of reading something between Gothic fantasy and psychological, complex historical story.
( Cutting this a bit, because it got LONG. )So, I did get this story in Yuletide Madness! Though just a few hundred words long, it's complete in itself, a kind of a dreamy reflection that fits the atmosphere of the books perfectly. It has the heartaching wistfulness associated with the books and with the Rosengåva siblings in particular, it's incredibly beautiful just in the way the books are, and Rosilda and her longings feel just right, as does the sense of together-yet-separate she has with Arild, and it succeeds in giving me new insights about these characters I've been fascinated with for over 20 years. And it's simply enchanting to know there are other people who love this story and these characters enough to write this, or read this.
That's exactly what Yuletide is for, isn't it?
Here it is:
Totentanz
Fandom: Skuggserien | The Shadow Series - Maria Gripe
Characters: Rosilda Falck af Stenstierna, Arild Falck af Stenstierna
Words: 315
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Living in Rosengåva is almost not like living at all.
The story is lovely, but before I say more about it, let me write about this book series. It's one of the beloved books/series of my heart, one that I've been reading and rereading since I was about 11, and has shaped my literary tastes and fascinations and thoughts more than I can even understand. I don't know what languages it's been translated into - the original is in Swedish, and I've mostly been reading it in Finnish translation. It consists of four books by the Swedish author Maria Gripe, telling a story of families and secrets, growing up and much more, set in early 1900s Sweden. They're historical novels that don't read like typical historical novels but focus on the hearts and minds and interactions of the characters, while the age and place they live in influence them greatly. The series is known as Skuggserien - the Shadow Series - because each of the book titles includes the word shadow, and shadows are a constant theme of the books - in the form of secrets and hidden things, dreams and fancies, dark places, long shadows cast by the past, and more than I can explain here.
They've got many elements of Gothic fiction, while going my deeper and psychologically truer than any Gothic fiction I've read; I only understood in adulthood that this is where my love for mysterious houses, family secrets, hidden identities, secret sisters, mysterious pasts, dreamy gardens, burning houses, written secrets, dark corridors and all that originates from - and why I always yearn for much more depth than just the outer trappings, because these books already gave it to me when I was very young. They're beautifully written, deep and complex, and though they were accessible to 11-year-old me (I was precocious; I think the intended target group is a bit older), they've got at least as much to offer over 20 years later. The books fascinatingly walk along the border between realism and fantasy, and though the events never cross over to overtly supernatural, you have the sense of reading something between Gothic fantasy and psychological, complex historical story.
( Cutting this a bit, because it got LONG. )So, I did get this story in Yuletide Madness! Though just a few hundred words long, it's complete in itself, a kind of a dreamy reflection that fits the atmosphere of the books perfectly. It has the heartaching wistfulness associated with the books and with the Rosengåva siblings in particular, it's incredibly beautiful just in the way the books are, and Rosilda and her longings feel just right, as does the sense of together-yet-separate she has with Arild, and it succeeds in giving me new insights about these characters I've been fascinated with for over 20 years. And it's simply enchanting to know there are other people who love this story and these characters enough to write this, or read this.
That's exactly what Yuletide is for, isn't it?
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