Memory of Love (9781101603024)

Praise from New Zealand for
The Memory of Love

“The emotional weather of the story is changeable and dramatic, with storm clouds sometimes threatening, unpredictable tides and winds of inner conflict, and chance meetings. . . . It is the storytelling, of course, that is most seductive, with the right balance between the disclosure and holding back of information to keep us reading to the end—appreciating at every twist a writer delighting in her craft.”

—
Sunday Star-Times

 

“Olsson's lyrical style is perfectly suited to the reflective tenderness that characterizes Marion's narrative voice. The poetry of Olsson's prose is especially powerful in the evocation of the natural environment, which shapes and defines the characters of the novel. It's an iconic New Zealand landscape—the sea, the dunes, the shifting light—and Olsson makes good use both of its visual beauty and metaphoric possibility.”

—
Listener

 

“[A] tender, loving story . . . concerned with searching and healing . . . The narrative steps carefully, echoing the cadences of private, troubled lives. Details are meticulously evoked: lemons from a backyard tree; the white light of a lowering sun. Lives and their wounds are rendered with respect and a total absence of any moralizing. You sense an author of real integrity.”

—Weekend Herald

 

“The clear, uncluttered prose allows the tragedy outlined to speak for itself, and tells us as much about the narrator as the events she describes. Haunting and beautiful,
The Memory of Love
is a reminder of the fragility of happiness and the impossibility of living without hope.”

—Otago Daily Times

Praise for
Sonata for Miriam

“Olsson understands how memory works—the combination of fact and fiction, photographs and moments. . . . Readers will love this book.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

 

“If we don't know where we come from, can we really know who we are? That's the question that haunts . . . Olsson's poignant new novel. . . . Olsson renders luminous prose that lingers over the startling beauty of New Zealand and the blistering truths of the human heart. This is a potent, piercing tale of revelation and regret.”

—
Booklist
(starred review)

 

“Olsson explores the hard-won wisdom that can come through grief. . . . Olsson's dense, magisterial prose pulls the reader in immediately, and Adam's profound sadness is perfectly handled. . . . It's palpable, but never saccharine or overbearing as the narrative builds toward its unexpected conclusion.”

—Publishers Weekly

Praise for
Astrid & Veronika

“Linda Olsson's novel casts the themes of secrecy, passion, and loss in the shape of a double helix, intertwining the stories of two women. . . . Natural and vivid, utterly convincing . . . simply so beguiling.”

—The New York Times Book Review

 

“Linda Olsson evokes, with great precision and beauty, the landscape of a friendship. . . .
Astrid & Veronika
is penetrating and beautifully written, and it affirms the power of narrative to transform.”

—Kim Edwards, author of
The Memory Keeper's Daughter

 

“Beautiful and deeply affecting. A dreamlike evocation of the power of friendship.”

—Mary McGarry Morris, author of
The Lost Mother and Songs in Ordinary Time

 

“Readers of Anne Tyler and Jodi Picoult will appreciate the lyrical prose and expert rendering of the themes of heartbreak and loss.”

—
Booklist

 

“What separates this debut from the rest of the crowd is Olsson's deft writing. Her descriptions are beautiful, capable of both painting the scene and creating a mood. . . . Booksellers from around the country as well as locally have raved about
Astrid & Veronika
. It's easy to understand why.”

—Portland Tribune

“Has the hallmarks of an Ingmar Bergman film: a leisurely pace, a chilly Scandinavian setting leavened by rich observations of nature, and characters whose prim, polite facades eventually disappear, exposing years of anger and hurt.”

—Kirkus Reviews

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE MEMORY OF LOVE

©
CAROLINE ANDERSSON

Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1948. She graduated from the University of Stockholm with a law degree and worked in law and finance until she left Sweden in 1986. What was intended as a three-year posting to Kenya then became a tour of the world with stops in Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Japan, until she settled in New Zealand with her family in 1990. In 1993 she completed a bachelor of arts in English and German literature at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2003 she won the
Sunday Star-Times
Short Story Competition. Olsson's first novel,
Astrid & Veronika
, became an international success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Scandinavia, Europe, and the United States. It was followed by the heartbreaking and moving
Sonata for Miriam
. Olsson divides her time between Auckland, New Zealand, and Stockholm, Sweden.

The
Memory
of
Love

Linda Olsson

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa

Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in New Zealand as
The Kindness of Your Nature
by Penguin Group (NZ) 2011

Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2013

Copyright © Linda Olsson, 2011

All rights reserved

“From a Survivor.” Copyright © 2002 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, from
The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems, 1950–2001
by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of the author and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-101-60302-4

CIP data available

 

Chapter openers designed by Sara Bellamy

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

For my mother

The pact that we made was the ordinary pact

of men & women in those days

 

I don't know who we thought we were

that our personalities

could resist the failures of the race

 

Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know

the race had failures of that order

and that we were going to share them

 

Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special

 

Your body is as vivid to me

as it ever was: even more

 

since my feeling for it is clearer:

I know what it could and could not do

 

it is no longer

the body of a god

or anything with power over my life

 

Next year it would have been 20 years

and you are wastefully dead

who might have made the leap

we talked, too late, of making

 

which I live now

not as a leap

but a succession of brief, amazing movements

 

each one making possible the next

‘From a Survivor' by Adrienne Rich