In the Norwegian author's first novel since the unlikely success of his nonfiction guide to chopping and storing firewood, Norwegian Wood, Lars Mytting gives a richly detailed and deeply human account of the battle between progress and tradition in a rural village in 1880 Norway.
After village pauper Klara freezes to death during the New Year's Day service, fiery new pastor Kai Schweigaard announces a daring plan to sell and move the Butangen's old stave church to Germany and build a modern church in its place. Sensitive and romantic architecture student Gerhard Schönauer is sent from Dresden to Butangen to make reference sketches of the church and oversee its disassembly. Neither man reckons on the opposition of beautiful, brilliant Astrid Hekne, whose medieval ancestors gave the church the magnificent Sister Bells, named for conjoined twin girls born into the Hekne family. Astrid feels drawn to both men, but neither the status she would gain as a pastor's wife nor a possible future in faraway Dresden can dissuade her from hatching a cunning ruse to keep the Sister Bells from leaving Butangen.
The first installment in a planned trilogy, The Bell in the Lake is a sprawling, ambitious blend of folklore, faith, magical realism and palpable admiration for the elaborately carved stave churches, most of which are lost to history. Although Astrid's resolution rings hollow, on the whole Mytting has created a fascinating, thoroughly detailed view into the life of a community torn between embracing the future and revering the past. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads