Shell

Author/Guide: Kristina Olsson

Why a Booktrail?

1960s: The Sydney Opera House is about to be created…

ISBN: 978-1471172625
Genre: Fiction

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Sydney, 1960s: newspaper reporter Pearl Keogh has been relegated to the women’s pages as punishment for her involvement in the anti-war movement, and is desperate to find her two young brothers before they are conscripted.

Newly arrived from Sweden, Axel Lindquist is set to work as a sculptor on the Sydney Opera House. Haunted by his father’s acts in the Second World War, he seeks solace in his attempts to create a unique piece that will do justice to the vision of Jørn Utzon, the controversial architect of the Opera House’s construction.

Pearl and Axel’s lives orbit and collide, as they both struggle in the eye of the storm

Locations

Reset

Travel Guide

Sydney

Sydney opera house

This is an historical tale of how and when the Sydney Opera house was built and the conditions of world politics at that time. It’s 1965 and the United States is becoming further embroiled in the Vietnam War. On the other side of the world in Australia, a national military draft has been announced and the anti-war movement is growing in strength.

Axel Lindquist has only recently arrived from Sweden and is excited to start work on the glass of the besieged Sydney Opera House. For him, this is a new country, a new chance to live and a new chance to work on what will become an iconic project.

“His glasswork had flowered into complexity, a way of shaping his yearning, of what he saw — the lakes, the shore and its paths, rain, snow. His liquid world. The terrible strength of water and of glass. Their fragility and beauty.”

Jørn Utzon, the Opera House’s controversial architect, a real figure is also neatly woven into the story.

Skåne County

Although the novel not set here, the threads of the story weave back to “Glass Country”

Streetview Maps

A) Australia - Sydney - NSW - Sydney Opera House

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

This was fascinating! I had never really looked at the Sydney Opera House before and thought about it. It’s such an iconic building and image that you think you’d recognise it, but what a view I got from this novel!

The fact that the architect was Danish…again something else I didn’t know and so I was thrilled to read about him in the novel and then to head over to the trusty internet to find more of his story on the Opera House website. There’s so much to this story and one which I feel the author has woven into a very good fictional novel.

The writing is just lovely and the threads of symbolism are beautifully woven with images of water and light. Much of what we see is through the eyes of the Glass sculptor Axel and so this works so well, evoking the essence and feel of the building and the art of glass work. The setting of course is made up of both!

There’s a lot going on in the background too with this novel and the time and place are evoked through world wide events such as the Vietnam war and what this meant for those who were involved. The war was far away but yet so close and the repercussions caused more than ripples in the waters here.

It’s an extremely lyrical novel full of nuances and shades of various tones depending on how you view it. I imagine reading this beside a window with the sun streaming through couldn’t give any more colour to this book.

It’s like looking at a stained glass window and gradually seeing the wonders in front of you.

Recommended.