Her daily life sounds like a frigid struggle to survive. Interactions with her small community, her unresolved grief and coping with everyone’s expectations of her grind at her mental state.  

The description of her life was very good. It made me shiver feeling the cold, reading this.  I would have got up and left Greenland, but you just don’t do that if its your home.

Voila, an opportunity to travel for the first time to France. To Provence. The land of imagery, of read books and way of life so different to her lived experiences.

Like a flower opening to the sun, IIse responds to Provence and her work translating ‘The last living troubadour of Provence’s’ poems. The sun warms her heart to life and pleasure and living. The words she muses over in translation are exquisite, they challenge her own thoughts and choices.

And when you open your heart up to new experiences and thoughts, can you go back to being who you were before?

This novel was laden with metaphors – the cold and the heat, the living and the dead, being part of a community and living in isolation. Living in a wooden house or living in a stone house. The languages you speak vs the languages you don’t know yet that are inside your heart. Showing your feelings or keeping them hidden deep. It was a very beautifully crafted read. 

There is a reason this book has been so popular and that’s because its good. I felt it and that’s the sign of a skilled author. I was on the journey with Ilse, and it felt authentic.

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