The Bell In The Lake
by Lars Mytting
First Lines

THIS IS A MEME FOR ALL YOU ‘FIRST PAGE BROWSERS’

THE BELL IN THE LAKE by LARS MYTTING

BOOK BEGINNINGS / FIRST LINES

FIRST STORY – THE INNERMOST LANDSCAPE

“The birth was hard. The hardest ever perhaps, and that in a village where many births might compete for that title. The mother was large, but not until the third day of her confinement did they realise she was carrying twins. The details of the delivery, how long the screams reverberated in the log farmhouse, or how the womenfolk actually got the babies out – all this was forgotten. Too ghastly to be told, too ugly to be remembered. The mother tore and bled to death and her name vanished from history. For ever remembered, however, were the twins and their deformity. They were joined from the hip down. But that was all. They breathed, cried, and were lively.

Their parents were from the Hekne farm and the girls were baptised Halfrid and Gunhild Hekne. They grew, laughed a lot, and were never a bother, but a joy. To each other, to their father, to their siblings, to the village. The Hekne twins were put before the loom early, and sat for long days, their four arms flying in perfect time between warp and weft, so swiftly that it was impossible to see who was threading the yarn through their weave at any one moment. The pictures they wove were uniquely beautiful, often mysterious, and soon their weaves were traded for silver and livestock. At that time nobody thought of putting their mark on such craftwork, and later there were many who paid a high price for a hekneweave even when it was uncertain that it was genuine”

So, you have taken a look, would you read the book?

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Just to give you an extra helping hand, here is the book’s premise.

THE BELL IN THE LAKE by LARS MYTTING

As long as people could remember, the stave church’s bells had rung over the isolated village of Butangen, Norway.

Cast in memory of conjoined twins, the bells are said to ring on their own in times of danger.

In 1879, young pastor Kai Schweigaard moves to the village, where young Astrid Hekne yearns for a modern life. She sees a way out on the arm of the new pastor, who needs a tie to the community to cull favor for his plan for the old stave church, with its pagan deity effigies and supernatural bells.

When the pastor makes a deal that brings an outsider, a sophisticated German architect, into their world, the village and Astrid are caught between past and future, as dark forces come into play.

Translated By Deborah Dawkin

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You might also like to visit Gilion, over at ‘Rose City Reader‘, where you can share links to the book beginnings from her own reading schedule and that of many of our fellow bloggers.

There are always plenty of new authors and titles to be discovered, and you never know where that next ‘must read’ will come from

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