Absalom's Hair

A Norwegian bachelor falls in love with a young woman and marries her, but when their son is born, she rebels, and the family lives in tension until the father dies. Then it becomes her story, and when the son grows up, it becomes his story. It's a bit hard to see where the narrative is going, but the end ties it up nicely. All the characters are well-drawn, and the landscape of the islands off Norway comes through the writing.
Following that story is a short piece of a child's recollection of a murder and the execution of the murderer. It's quite strong.

I found Absalom's hair interesting and well written, revealing the thoughts of enlightened people from a century ago, and the same social and relationship problems we face today. The moral in the story, if there is a moral, and I believe there is, is that it is all too easy to lose one's path in life.

This short novel by one of Norway's 'Great Four' (and a Nobel Prize winner) explores a man's relationship with his obsessive mother and the other women in his life. But 'Sons and Lovers' it ain't. Perhaps something was lost in the (apparently unattributed ) translation. The short piece appended to this 'A Painful Memory from Childhood' could be seen as a coda, or as a separate story. It describes, in chilling detail, the trial and execution of a popular young man, seen from the perspective of a child. All the same, it strikes me that there is a little too much sympathy for a man who killed a woman with an axe, the first blow not killing her outright, leaving her begging for mercy; there's also an implication that because she had 'lain with other men' she might have deserved what she got. I won't be reading any more Bjornson in a hurry.