• A Postcard for Annie
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Archipelago Books

A Postcard for Annie

A Postcard for Annie

by Ida Jessen, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

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A young woman witnesses a terrible accident with unexpected consequences, a mother sits with her unconscious son in a hospital room, a pair of sisters remember their mother’s hands braiding their hair. The women in these quietly intense stories are all in one way or another out of sync with their lives and with themselves, women who appease and indulge, fret and acquiesce. Women who yearn to connect, who struggle to come to terms with unfulfilled love, for a husband, a son, a friend, who are locked inside wordless, sexless marriages, or impossibly bound by maternal bonds. Through all six stories, Jessen’s women cling to someone, someone from whom love, despite their efforts, cannot be wrung.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781953861221
Pages: 180
Publication Date:

Praise

In A Postcard for Annie, Ida Jessen has honed to perfection her own quite unique form of psychological realism, in a work in which, once more, the women take center stage; in which secrets, irrational forces and often anything but sensible explanations prevail - and in which, yet again, she proves herself to be a brilliant depicter of people who find themselves in situations that are both familiar and far-out.
—Danish Literary Magazine

Jessen’s writing is graceful, unhurried, convincing. The narratives unfold in unexpected ways . . . The complexities of love and the passage of time enrich this insightful, original collection.
—Kirkus Reviews

It is with the custom delicacy, grace, and poetic efficiency that Martin Aitken has approached Ida Jessen’s prose, deftly capturing in English this quiet celebration of female connection, which is also a gentle mourning for what could have been, what never was, and what is. A Postcard for Annie is a collection of stories in which hope is masked in grief, regret, and yearning—yet found anew in nature, in friendship, and in time.
—Rachael Pennington, Asymptote

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