Fires and Ice (Eldar och is)

Birgitta Stenberg

”It was getting crowded around her on the church steps, the priest had come out and was shaking hands and said his ‘see you next week’ to the ones who had an excuse  for not coming along to the after service coffee. Alva also shook his hand.

- And welcome in for a cup of coffe, miss Alma, the priest’s wife said while Alma’s hand rested in the priest’s and both of them looked at her.

When the priest let go of her the hand, it had rested in his a second too long, she noticed it the way hear hart started rushing. She knew what this feeling ment."

 

Fires and Ice is in many ways the conclusion of the acknowledged autobiographical series by Birgitta Stenberg.

 

As an adult Birgitta gets a letter which questions important events in her family history. She starts a journey back in time – a journey beginning with her grandmother Alma. At her first job, Alma falls in love with the wife of the priest, which in turn leads to an intricate ménage à trios. When the priest later gets her pregnant the scandal is a fact. Alma loses her job and her parents arrange a marriage with the priest’s farmboy.

 

As a teenager the extramarital daughter Ingeborg takes the opportunity and moves to Stockholm. She is young, beautiful and ambitious – and terrified to become poor. Quickly she grabs the possibilities that come along. Her daughter Birgitta does the opposite. Without taking actions, she lets things happen which sometimes leads to consequences hard to solve.

 

Fires and Ice is a novel with strong female portraits. Not least the one of Ingeborg, who’s integrity, erraticness, vanity, and liberated love, runs like a red thread throughout the whole story. But at the same time the novel asks a sharp question on what can be told when the memory is questioned.

 

Rights sold

Sweden: Norstedts

 

Reviews

"In Birgitta Stenberg’s new autobiography erotic has a deeper bottom. Kajsa Ekis Ekman is happy about an authorship that takes it easier and dares to rest in the darkness."

DN

 

"Birgitta Stenberg’s novel is transformed to an existential thriller. Reality exceeds fiction more than once. She tries to lay a puzzle, find the truth about her own background and she doesn’t moralize over the choices the women have made. Birgitta Stenberg writes with objective elegance //…// the story becomes a touching story and it moves me deeply."

Dalademokraten

 

"Birgitta Stenberg’s autobiographical portrait is as much a quiet revolt as it is reconciliation. Warmth and understanding grows between mother and daughter, the childhood mysteries are somewhat explained. //…// Stenberg’s description of the endless grief after her loved Håkan’s death is painfully beautiful. “… my body has not understood. It listens for his steps. It cries for him every day and night. It hasn’t a moments rest where it fumbles after him in bed at night.” How clear love is when it brutally is pulled away."

GT

 

"In a way she finishes her autobiography series by traveling back in time to give both her grandmother and her mother a chance to leave their stories. And it becomes clear that each person, each life, owns a story which is always worth to tell and always worth listening to."

Ystads Allehanda