BookBrowse Reviews Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill

BookBrowse:

'Extravagant and absorbing ... I didn't want it to end.' 1st Novel

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Ursula, Under published in hardcover to generally very positive reviews last year. A few felt it to be a little uneven/unwieldy, for example, Kirkus Review summed up describing it as, 'wildly uneven, awesomely ambitious: a mess, in fact, but you can't help but be impressed by the author's commitment and boldness'. Recently released in paperback it is picking up enthusiastic readers by word of mouth, and would make an interesting book club choice.

This is Ingrid Hill's first novel, follow a collection of short stories, Dixie Church Interstate Blues (1989). From her interview it becomes clear that it's not only in her writing that she likes to take on challenging tasks! She says, 'when I was left a single mom with eleven children (she now has twelve), I had to get a career to support them, so I went back to graduate school to be able to teach literature and writing at the college level. I needed two foreign languages as part of this program, and I was feeling a bit heady with both the impossibility and the necessity of this, so I asked for Swedish first. My father was Swedish-American, a sea captain, and I'd always wanted to study Swedish but never had a chance. As part of my program, I got to study in Sweden, and the Swedish history and culture classes really intrigued me, especially the era of Gustavus Adolphus.'

This review first ran in the August 3, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.