Booktalk on a Sunday 8

when I was just a young girl, I read Franz Werfel's The Song of Bernadette As a Lutheran I was brough up far from the catholic church's celebration of Maria/Mary. For me she was the mother of Jesus, my upbringing focused on the son, not the mother.

Now I am a mother of four, with two son's on the edge to reach the age Christ had when we read about him in the Bible. And my thoughts are wandering to his mother. What was it like to give birth to a the world's Saviour. What was it like to have to flee to Egypt with the new born baby, to miss him in the temple when he was 12, what was it like to follow him in the shadows during his adult life which ended at Eastertime about 2000 years ago.

My reading took me to Lourdes, to a young girl, Bernadette, and her meetings with the Holy Mother. I was mezmerised, I was captured. For the days it took me to read the two books(the Norwegian translation comes in two volumes, black hardbound with a brown print of a young girl's face on the front) I walked on sacred ground. Even today I can remember the LP I played while reading, the sofa where I sat cuddled up, the plastic green surface of my father's desk where I kept the book when I had to do other things, like school :-)

The writing of my Lent book has taken me once more to the life of Maria, the mother of Jesus. Last year when I spent Easter in Terracina in Italy, I went to the small village of Castelpetroso in Pentria, where two country women on Easter Friday in 1888 saw the suffering Holy Mother in a cave. Some time after a found was discovered where Maria had been seen, and the water could cure illness.

A couple of weeks ago I read a book about Bernadette written by the Norwegian Pater Kjell Arvid Pollestad, and today it's time to start The Song of Bernadette again. I know it will be a good read.

Venezia

With less than two weeks left till we are in Venice again, I've decided it's time to get my favorite fiction Venice book out of the Venice shelf, and on to the kitchen table. If you are a booklover like me, you have books everywhere in the house - bookshelves filled, piles besides the sofa, a smaller pile on the coffeetable, a basket with a few paperbacks in the bathroom, three or four books on the small table beside the bed, one in the backpack you use to work every day, a small one in the purse, one or two on the kitchen dresser, one in the car and so on. You never know when you get a minute or two to fit in some reading.

But back to my favorite Venice fiction. I'm in no doubt. It is Salley Vickers Miss Garnet's Angel. First time I read this book I borrowed it from a friend, then I found it last year in a small booksthop in Venice during my carnival visit, bought it and started to read it right away. And had my perfect time sitting in the St.Raphael Church reading the book, looking at the Tobias paintings, imagine seeing Miss Julia Garnet in the church, following her when she left and walked over to her flat with her :-) I love the book and it's two parallel stories, and can't wait to read it again. And to visit the St. Raphael church again. Last time I was there my camera didn't work, but the photo I am giving you as a substitute is not bad either I think.