Book Review: Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson

I haven’t been writing since I’ve been travelling. I’m actually writing this in the airplane and watching What Happens in Vegas with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.

I finished reading one more book, this is the 6th book that I read this year, maybe I’ll manage to read 52 books this year.

The book I read this time is called Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson. Sadly this book was absolutely awful. It’s seriously the worst book of all the books I’ve read this year! Horrendous! I had to strain myself to finish reading this book! It went from 3rd person to 1st person in the same sentence! All the names were the same and there wasn’t much of a thread in the story.

The basic story was quite good, the thing this book needed was a very very very good editor and being rewritten almost completely! I’ll try to explain what this book was all about but it’s hard since I really didn’t understand it all.

There are three main story characters. There is Anna, Johanna (Anna’s mother) and Hanna (Johanna’s mother). The story is the story of their life. It starts with Anna and her life where she wonders about the life story of her mother and grandmother. She starts writing down the stories of her female ancestors.
Here are some quotes from the book:

Page 48: Hanna walked home through the forest with a dizzy sense of being too much. She’d be mistress in her own house, a house as big and fine as at Lyckan.

- Hanna the grandmother, just got the news that she would marry a miller.

Page 93: Eighteen months after Little John was born, the next boy arrived and, as expected, was like the Eriksson family, large brown eyes, straight nose and dark brown hair. Maja-Lisa was proud as if the herself had given birth to him and decided that he was to be called Erik after her father.

- Maja-Lisa is Hanna’s mother, this quote is about Hanna’s third born son.

Page 180: Right from the beginning Anna had had an inkling that Rickard had little self-confidence. An autocratic mother? A weak father? But when she was young she hadn’t wanted to understand. Constantly understanding was a danger to yourself. Her mother’s life had taught her that. Johanna was one of those who always understood, so had had to endure a great deal.

- Anna talking about her husband Rickard and her mother Johanna.

Page 207: My life has been divided into two halves. The first half lasted for eight years of childhood, so was the same length as the remaining seventy. When I look back on the second half, I find four stages that changed me.

- Johanna talking about her life stages.

Page 245: That night I found it hard to sleep. I lay there, twisting and turning, trying to get the pictures of Arne to fit together. The young man who’d bravely stood up at the meeting and been mocked for agreeing with justice for women. The sailor who was so bold at sea. Politically clear-sighted, intelligent and knowledgeable. Foreman. And then this feeble creature sneaking away from his mother.

-Johanna talking about her husband Arne.

I really do not recommend reading this book. I do recommend Marianne Fredriksson to maybe rewrite this book and republish it! Because the basic story is good!

The book that I just started reading is called Soulless by Gail Carriger, it hasn’t started well so I hope it get’s better, I’m always very hopeful that the books do get better! I might need to start reevaluating the books that I pick to read!

What should I read after Soulless?