Invisible Links

Invisible Links

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5
(1 Review)
Invisible Links by Selma Lagerlöf

Published:

1900

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963

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Invisible Links

By

5
(1 Review)
"In poetic feeling these stories are quite equal to the best passages in 'The Story of Gosta Berling' --New York Times (Translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach.)

Book Excerpt

o talk to him of such things on the way home from his first ball.

Beyond the shop there was a little dark room for the shop-boy. There sat Petter Nord of to-day and came to an understanding with Petter Nord of yesterday. How pale and cowardly the churl looked. Now he heard what he really was. A thief and a miser. Did he know the seventh commandment? By rights he ought to have forty stripes. That was what he deserved.

God be blessed and praised for having let him go to the ball and get a new view of it all. Usch! what ugly thoughts he had had; but now it was quite changed. As if riches were worth sacrificing conscience and the soul's freedom for their sake! As if they were worth as much as a white mouse, if the heart could not be glad at the same time! He clapped his hands and cried out in joy--that he was free, free, free! There was not even a longing to possess the fifty crowns in his heart. How good it was to be happy!

When he had gone to bed, he thought that he would show Halfvorson th

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Short stories by the Nobel Prize winner, translated into English. All are set in the Swedish countryside or seaside, and deal with common people. Most of them could have taken place anytime in the last thousand years.
The culture and motivations of the characters is sufficiently foreign as to make them almost magical. Even the bad people are in some way good.
I enjoyed Uncle Reuben, and, Downie most. The first concerns a three year old boy who haunts a family three generations after his death. The second is about an ambitious man's betrothed, who is too innocent and simple to allow her fiance to swindle his Uncle.
Great characters, descriptions, and plotting.