Sigrid Undset has a great talent for creating realistic characters and evoking the atmosphere and way of life in medieval Norway. I very much enjoyed reading this first installment of the <i>Kristin Lavransdatter</i> trilogy, which covers Kristin's childhood up to age 17, when she gets married. As with real people, Kristin is sometimes a sympathetic character and sometimes not. She starts out as a gentle, obedient child to become a rebellious young woman who betrays her parents' trust by making an unwise decision to start an illicit affair with an older man of dubious reputation and lots of baggage (rather reminiscent at times of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen's <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>). Except that Kristin is not so lucky as Marianne because the affair does not stay platonic. It leads to consequences that are all too forseeable (a pregnancy), and she succeeds in getting her parents to give their consent to the marriage--which includes breaking her betrothal to a more honorable man.
As with other Undset books I have read, the power to make decisions, the responsibility to shoulder the consequences, and the effects of one's decisions on other people are a major theme in <i>The Wreath</i>.
Have already started on the second book in the series, <i>The Wife</i>.
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