Head over Heels reading Norwegian Night by Derek Miller

I do hope that I allow myself the time to be immersed in Norwegian Night this weekend. I started it early last week, and I've had one interruption after another that has interfered with my absorption. I've had books to read for the Children's Lit class I'm teaching now, articles of criticism to digest, and then the research reading for my book project.

But I'll tell you, Norwegian Night is a special book. I so appreciate the acutely drawn characterizations of Sheldon, the protagonist in his eighties who has been diagnosed as being in the early stages of dementia, and Rhea, his granddaughter, particularly. I feel completely at home with them and have embraced all the assorted themes that are running through the novel. Norwegian Night has depth and believable characters who suffer and carry on, and that's what I'm enjoying so much about it.

I desperately need the down time to finish this book because I had a terribly big "special" birthday on Monday, and I'm groaning under the weight of years. Okay, if you must know, my mother was watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II when her water broke. I was born 7 hours later. (I always wondered how my mother's story could be accurate when the coronation took place on June 2 and I was born on June 3.) Last week I learned that the televised broadcasts in the U.S. were delayed a full day. I'm so glad to have that discrepancy cleared up because I've been puzzled by it for decades! It was the biography Elizabeth the Queen by the American writer Sally Bedell Smith that set me straight. As for the book itself, it's entirely too laudatory a bio, yet I enjoyed learning what I did. Smith had a vast access to Royal archives, which an objective biographer probably would not have been given. Will it be possible someday to have a fully balanced biography of the Queen? Perhaps. I hope so.