Sunday's Children (First Edition)

When Father comes to the house where eight-year-old Pu, his ten-year-old brother, and Mother are spending the summer, Pu's world is suddenly turned upside-down. Movie tie-in.

The renowned film director's second autobiographical novel (after Best Intentions ) is a moving, if misguided, bit of whimsy that continues the story of his parents' marriage. The Bergman household in rural Sweden is comprised of the reproving and often absent pastor Erik; his beautiful, distant wife Karin; their preteen terror Dag; eight-year-old Ingmar, affectionately known as "Pu"; four-year-old Lillian; and various maids. The book chronicles an especially trying time for them all as Karin threatens to leave Erik and take the children with her. Assorted uncles and aunts drift through the text, but the focus remains Pu's troubled relationship with his tyrannical father--both of them, by virtue of having been born on Sunday, are declared clairvoyant by the kitchen staff. Though much of the story is enjoyable, the meaty resolutions Bergman tries to hang on the skeletal plot seem inappropriate. His slavish fascination with the details of his early childhood tend to slow down the narrative, and one can't help but wonder what the author might do if he turned his precise writing and sharp eye to some subject other than himself. A movie version of Sunday's Children is slated for release in late April.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Since retirement in 1986, Bergman (b. 1918) has become as prolific a writer as he was a director. Here, he follows his survey of his film output, Images (p. 1429), with a sequel to his novel The Best Intentions (1993--not reviewed). Both novels have been filmed. Sunday's Children will open in the States in April, while The Best Intentions is already on videocassette. In that book, Bergman told of the romance between his parents, and of the logs thrown in their path by their families. Now we have the script-length story of their eight-year-old son, Pu, who was born with the gift of clairvoyance granted to Sunday's children (and movie directors). Mother rents Pastor Dahlberg's odd set of joined and painted boxes that he calls a summer house. Father, himself a pastor, sets forth to join his summering family, and Pu runs off to the train station to meet him. This is a day out of heaven and hell, a countryside of great natural beauty in which Pu watches two calves slaughtered, has various hints of sex, is worried sick that his parents will split up. There is a big summer- cottage dinner scene like that in Wild Strawberries; Pu helps his grandmother go to the privy past midnight, hears his parents arguing in the small hours. In inspired flash-forwards, the sexy Maj years later drowns herself because she's pregnant, and Ingmar (Pu at 50) visits Father, their roles reversed, Father now a mumbling widower of 82, ridden by hereditary muscular dystrophy, his feet locked into orthopedic boots, his spiritual faith devastated. Young Pu goes on a trip with choleric Father, who must preach at a far village, and Ingmar the Author is reconciled with Father in a magnificent scene out of the climax of De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. A Nobel for Ingmar? He deserves it many times over. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Bergman's renown as a filmmaker exerts a powerful presence over his second novel, a vivid and visual tale revealing the darker aspects of family life. A vacation in the country, circa 1926, is the setting for the drama, with a young boy named Pu at its center. Pu, after witnessing the tumultuous reunion of his parents, brings a wealth of childhood emotions to bear on the earthshaking event, as he does with many other intensely felt experiences of his eighth summer. A literary device allows the story to jump forward in time so that Pu can be shown dealing late in life with his most trying relationship: his father, now an elderly, infirm widower, entertains the aging son with excerpts from the diaries of his dead mother. The mysterious ways of adults are interpreted through the poignant recollections of a vulnerable youth and his older self, in Bergman's stirring tale. A movie based upon the book is scheduled for spring. Alice Joyce

This second novel by the highly acclaimed Swedish film director records a stifling August weekend in his youth, focusing on the author's volatile love-hate relationship with his father. Eight-year-old Pu (read Bergman) accompanies his strict Lutheran-minister parent on a preaching trip to a distant church. The temperamental, shifting weather reflects the changing moods of father and son, with Pu struggling to cope with childhood trials and terrors. Penned in earthy, sensory prose, this brief memoir poignantly captures a dark, sensitive incident and illuminates it with flashforwards. Publication is scheduled to coincide with the release of the film Sunday's Children (with screenplay by Bergman and directed by his son, Daniel). This haunting, autobiographical work is highly recommended for serious fiction and film collections.
- Sister M. Anna Falbo CSSF, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo,
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.