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Amazing Women by the Sea: the novel on the screen
Amazing Women by the Sea is a film adaptation of the novel by the Scandinavian writer Monika Fagerholm, who’s actually Finish but part of the Swedish-speaking literary movement.
A young graduate in social sciences and psychology, Monika wrote her first novel Sham in 1987, but it wasn’t until 1994 with Underbar Kvinnor Vid Vatten (Amazing Women by the Sea) when she entered the literary scene. The novel was highly acclaimed by critics in France - it was translated in 1998 by Gallimard- and abroad. The Publishers Weekly and The New York Times Book Review qualified it as "poignant" and "radiant" story. She also won numerous awards like the Runeberg and Finlandia Prize in Finland, the Augusti Prize in Sweden, the IMPAC Prize in Dublin, and it also became the most translated Scandinavian novel of the 90's.
Amazing Women by the Sea immerses its readers during the summer of two Finnish families in the heart of the 1960s. Monika Fagerholm explores the life of Rosa and Isabelle, two women who seem to embody an ideal of the “American” life but the happiness of their Finnish oasis seems really fragile and superficial, while the summer of 1968 is crossed by social and political upheavals in the world. The passion of the author for social sciences can be found in this work since she painted the emancipation of two women, who decide to abandon their traditional roles as housewives. |
