Few men of letters would
object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being
convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders of
critical tomahawks might say to the contrary, resolved to persevere in
the line he had chosen and to pluck victory from the heels of defeat.
And the victory came even the same year (1883), when he published what,
to my mind, is the most charming of all his novels, "The Family at
Gilje." That is a book which is taken, warm and quivering, out of the
very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively
in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy,
beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is
close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots--no shoddy woof of
cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Joergen,
Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come
trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel
the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch.
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