April Witch : A Novel
by Majgull Axelsson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Majgull AxelssonEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2002-03-19
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Villard / Random House
Book Reviews of April Witch : A Novel
Book Review: The Bookschlepper Recommends
Summary: 4 Stars
In this best-selling, award-winning Swedish novel, five women encircle their lives. There is Ella, mother of Desirée and foster mother to Christina, Margareta and Birgitta. Desirée lies in a hospital bed, stricken with cerebral palsy and epilepsy since birth, mute and unmoving, but with a keen interest in the integrity of the universe and a capacity for out-of-body experience. Christina is the "good girl" whose birth mother is a fearsome hag and who determinedly succeeds. Margareta was left in a laundry and builds her life on impulses, seeking and shunning love. Birgitta's mother was an alcoholic prostitute and the apple falls close to the tree; angry and defensive she fights the world on behalf of her mother and herself. Through Desirée's bird's-eye view, we share each one's painful struggle with mother-daughter complexities, competition for favored status and Sweden's postwar welfare state. Axelson, with translator Linda Schenck, has written a powerful study of emotions that adds depth to the quickly moving, intricate plot. I couldn't put it down.
Summary of April Witch : A Novel
?No excuses will do anymore. Time to put my sisters in motion.?Desirée lies in a hospital bed thinking, dreaming. One of the children born severely disabled in 1950s Sweden and then routinely institutionalized for life?and one of a very few to survive nearly to the century?s end?she cannot walk or talk, but she has other capabilities. Desirée is an April witch, clairvoyant and omniscient, leaving her own body and traveling into the world denied her.
The working-class woman who gave Desirée up at birth took in three foster daughters several years later, and even as adults they know nothing of the existence of their fourth ?sister.? Christina, abused by her psychotic birth mother and burdened by a sense of inferiority, is now a physician; Margareta, the onetime foundling, an astrophysicist who can never manage to complete her dissertation, is as restless and sensual as she was in her youth; and Birgitta, in her day the fastest, sexiest teen queen in town, is now a derelict alcoholic and substance abuser.
In spite of her physical disabilities, Desirée possesses tremendous intelligence, and she observes the world around her with great acumen. She has developed a very special relationship with her primary care physician, Dr. Hubertsson, who realizes that she could and should know something about her own background. Unbeknownst to him, she goes on to make supernatural use of this information.
Sensing that her own time is drawing to a close, Desirée also feels that one of the others has lived the life that should have been hers. One day, each of the three women?Christina, Margareta, Birgitta ?receives a mysterious letter that inspires her to examine her past and her present, setting into motion a complex fugue of memory, regret, and confrontation that builds to a shattering climax.
April Witch created a furor upon its original publication in Sweden, where it was an immense bestseller. Addressing themes of mother-daughter relationships, competition between women, and the failures of Sweden?s postwar welfare state, it is foremost a thrillingly written and fascinating story.
A smash hit in its native Sweden, Majgull Axelsson's second novel, April Witch, is both a fantastic and earthbound story of memory and regret. Desiree Johansson is born with a variety of birth defects into Sweden's welfare state of the 1950s. Abandoned by her mother, Ella, to a life of institutions, Desiree ends up at age 50 wracked with pain and seizures, unable to walk or speak, and grieving over the imminent death of a doctor she loves. But Desiree is also an April witch, strong-willed within her bodily prison, and able to track, psychically, the movements of three women who were raised by Ella as foster children. Full of envy and contempt, Desiree comes to see the world through the eyes of her stepsisters, each of whom has endured fortune's extremes. This far-fetched tale is nicely balanced by veteran journalist Axelsson's talent for suspense, grit, and criticism of mid-20th century conformity. Axelsson's prose is crisp and penetrating, a perfect voice for a novel whose characters' inner lives are monitored, revealed vicariously. --Tom Keogh
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