When Mischief Came to Town

Recently orphaned Inge moves from Copenhagen to live with her (seemingly) grumpy grandmother on a tiny Danish island in 1911. She finds Grandmother's barn full of animals to be strange but entertaining; repressive teaching methods at school, however, almost do her in. Nannestad strings together buoyant, imaginatively outrageous adventures peppered with allusions to Andersen's fairy tales; sober emotional moments interlace the hilarity.

Recently orphaned Inge moves from Copenhagen to live with her (seemingly) grumpy grandmother on a tiny Danish island in 1911. She finds Grandmother's barn full of animals to be strange but entertaining: before long she's had a kicking contest with the donkey, injured the turkey, and broken a basket of eggs. Repressive teaching methods at school, however, almost do her in. Matters come to a head when she cuts off her one remaining plait (the other had early on been eaten by a goat), joins in the boys' games, defies the schoolmaster, and runs off to hide in a herring smokehouse. ("What are you all gawking at?" she asks the hundreds of herring strung up therein. "Haven't you ever seen a girl with no hair?") Nannestad strings together a series of buoyant, imaginatively outrageous adventures peppered with allusions (both reverent and irreverent) to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Although the novel is comic in tone, sober emotional moments interlace the hilarity as Inge comes to terms with her mother's death and as she and her grandmother begin to express their love for each other. The time-honored trope of "lively orphan thaws cold adult hearts" is the story's undercurrent. deirdre f. baker