Selma Lagerlöf
3 books
- These are stories where miracles happen in kitchens and farmyards, Värmland legends and Christ legends told with a straight face and a warm heart, like the marsh croft girl whose stubborn honesty upends a courtroom. If quiet, folk-tale strangeness suits you better than irony, she'll hold up.
- You get Gösta, a defrocked drunken priest who keeps wrecking and redeeming himself, plus a whole manor of pensioned cavaliers running riot on Ekeby for a year. It reads like Värmland folklore told by firelight, episodic and feverish, so skip it if you need a tidy plot.
- Nils starts out mean, honestly, a boy who torments the farm animals, and watching him earn the trust of Akka and the wild geese as they fly the length of Sweden is quietly moving. It's episodic and folkloric, better savored a chapter a night than rushed.