Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

From Vox - review by Emily VanDerWerff

Kristin Lavransdatter is an amazing novel about how God doesn’t care if we live or die. This Norwegian masterwork is over 1,000 pages long — and it may be the perfect book for the current moment.

Kristin Lavransdatter is over 1,000 pages long and was published in three parts between 1920 (one century old, baby!) and 1922. You can purchase it as either one volume or as three separate ones. It follows the life of one medieval Norwegian woman named (you guessed it) Kristin Lavransdatter, from the age of 7 until she dies somewhere around the age of 50. She leads a mostly normal life, but like all of us, she lives in abnormal times. Throughout her lifespan, major world events provide a backdrop of endless political intrigue, rises and falls from fortune and glory, and the arrival of the Black Death in Norway in 1349.

She focuses on the life Kristin carves out irrespective of them, a life involving a broken engagement, a scandalous love affair, and a slowly splintering relationship with her seven sons. By the time Kristin is gracefully approaching death, the book takes on a transcendent, almost religious quality — and even if you’re not a believer, the power of Kristin’s faith in God and her hope to feel his purpose in her life when he remains silent will still be moving.

read more here from Emily VanDerWerff @ Vox