Tarjei Vesaas:Spring Night

I’m always aston­ished at how Vesaas gets inside the thoughts and feel­ings of his char­ac­ters– usu­ally young people, adoles­cents. In Spring Night the main char­ac­ter, a boy, is on the brink of sexu­al­ity, without know­ing it him­self.  His older sis­ter is all too aware of her sexual power, with which she teases her suitor.  And into the house­hold (their par­ents are away overnight) erupts a dys­func­tional fam­ily, the par­ents at war with each other, a younger preg­nant woman, a fero­cious son, and a pubes­cent girl, the coun­ter­part of the main char­ac­ter.  The boy barely knows what to think, can’t identify what he’s feel­ing, has to inter­act with all these people and steer through the vicious fam­ily ten­sions and unstated sexual ten­sion.  It’s bril­liantly done.