LARS MYTTING, THE BELL IN THE LAKE

Finished reading this novel a few days ago. Intense, mystical, emotional yet at the same time stoic and wonderfully thick with closely observed detail of such humdrum things as farmwork, housework, village life in late nineteenth century Norway. One of the things I've always loved about the novel as an art form is the way it can make a small world - both the outside and the inside of that small world - take shape in our skulls. The Bell in the Lake does it magically.