Friday 13 January 2017

FOSSIL ISLAND by Barbara Sjoholm


Amazon UK £6.49 / £12.00
Amazon.com $9.99 / $18.00
Amazon CA n/a

Family Drama
19th Century / 1887

"A novel about love and independence in 19th century Denmark. Inspired by the relationship between the composer Carl Nielsen and the artist and ethnographer Emilie Demant Hatt”

The setting for Barbara Sjoholm's novel Fossil Island is Denmark in the 1880s, a period when a very traditional society started to meet the many changes of what was becoming the modern world.

Two sisters, the fourteen-year-old Nik, a tomboy at heart, and her older, more sedate, sister Maj, find their lives disrupted when their aunt introduces them to young, and very handsome, composer Carl Nielsen. A relationship develops between Carl and Nik, albeit it a most tempestuous one.

The cast of characters, both main and secondary, are very well portrayed and display human nature in all its myriad complexity, while the author's sensitive ability to bring alive the society of Denmark in the closing years of the 1880s is beautifully written.

It was a delight to read a novel about the late 1800s that was set outside of the familiarity of England. A must read.

©Anne Holt  Discovering Diamonds

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