Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson
A First Novel about Friendship and the Power of Storytelling
A New Zealand author celebrates her homeland, Sweden, and an unexpected friendship that heals deep emotional wounds.
Linda Olsson’s first novel is incredibly engrossing, despite the unassuming plot structure. Astrid & Veronika is about the interior lives of two women, living through a Swedish winter in near isolation, and about the unique friendship they develop. But this simple story of friendship frames the dramatic pasts of the two women who share their riveting stories. As the tragedies of the protagonists are revealed, this quiet little book becomes a true page-turner.
The Novel
Veronika, a writer in her early 30’s, returns from New Zealand to her native Sweden after the death of her fiancé. Unprepared to resume life, she rents a secluded house in a village north of Stockholm, where she plans to complete a new novel based on her recent tragedy. Veronika’s only neighbor, Astrid, is an old hermit known as the village witch. With hardly a sign of life from her neighbor’s house, Veronika begins a solitary life of routine but makes no progress on her writing.
Unbeknownst to Veronika, her presence has awakened the need for life and companionship in Astrid. Astrid watches her neighbor’s arrival and bustle around the house. Her concern becomes so great that she finally makes contact when Veronika gets sick.
The two find excuses to visit one another and eventually form a friendship in natural rhythm. In the course of their activities, such as dinners, swimming, mushroom picking and May Day celebration, they each reveal the secrets that haunt them.
Astrid’s past is even more tragic than Veronika’s. Throughout her long life, Astrid has only left the village once, and she has lived in the same house since she was born. The house, built with love for a happy family by her grandfather, has seen more pain than happiness. When Astrid was a child, her mother committed suicide.
In her teen years, Astrid’s only lover was killed at the beginning of their brief romance. Emotionally abused by her father and alone in the world, she marries a man she loathes. Astrid has become unable to deal with love. The one person she truly loves – her baby daughter – she smothers to death, perhaps to inflict revenge on her husband and perhaps to save her daughter from the painful kind of life she has known.
In the hands of another author, Astrid’s story would be wildly melodramatic. Olsson’s direct, beautiful prose turns melodrama into poetry. By sharing their stories, both characters learn to accept loss and live with the memory of their loves. Astrid and Veronika each move on – Veronika towards new work and new life, Astrid to her death. Before they finally part, each gives the other the most personal gift they could; Astrid leaves her house to Veronika, hoping to give her family home new life, and Veronika writes Astrid’s story, closing the old woman’s life by narration.
The Author
Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, where she obtained her law degree and worked in finance for many years. She has lived around the world but made her permanent home with her husband in Auckland, New Zealand in 1990. She returned to school in the early 90’s to earn a bachelor of arts in English and German. In addition to her first novel, Olsson has written short stories and travel pieces.
Astrid & Veronika is very personal book for Linda Olsson and has clear links to the author’s history. Olsson’s life as a writer who has lived in Kenya, Singapore, Britain, New Zealand and Japan parallels the character of Veronika, the author and world-traveler. The novel is nostalgic about people and places that have passed through Olsson’s life. On the author’s web page, she writes, “In a sense perhaps the book is a love letter to the country where I was born. Perhaps it is a letter of farewell. But, more importantly, I think it is a book about friendship”.
Olsson’s friendships with her grandmothers, Dagny and Anna-Lisa, inspired Astrid & Veronika. The book’s dedication reads, “for Anna-Lisa, my grandmother, my friend”. Each of her grandmothers struggled quite hard in their lives, but Anna-Lisa was constantly dreaming of something bigger. On her website, Linda Olsson says that the dedication was solely to Anna-Lisa “because I think that Dagny found her peace in life,” implying that Anna-Lisa did not. It seems that Olsson’s novel, like Veronika’s fictional one, is an effort to close her older friend’s life with loving narration.
Olsson, Linda. Astrid & Veronika. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. ISBN 978-0-14-303807-8. US $14.00, Canada $17.50.
