putterings 475 < 476 > 477 index
and sky and growthless crag dislimned; with something I suppose?
Thus passed day after day.
Autumn brought drizzle and storm; tempests harried, with rain and fog; sea and sky and growthless crag dislimned in murk and darkness.
In the daytime Jo busied himself on the pier and in the boat-shed; he found so much that needed attention and repair. And mother Anna, whenever she came to call him to meals, would always enquire :
“What are you doing today?”
To which Jo would answer :
“Oh — I’m only puttering”
“You are puttering with something, I suppose?”
“No, nothing in particular.”
Mother Anna thought this unfair of her husband. He could just as well take her into his confidence; it wasn’t [264] altogether pleasant for her, either, up there in the cottage alone.
— Ole Edvart Rølvaag, chapter “Hearts That Ache” in his The Boat of Longing (originally Langselens Baat (1921); Nora O. Solum, trans.; 1933) : 263
(1985 reprint, with introduction by Einar Haugen) borrowable at archive.org : link
—
reviewed by Percy Hutchison in The New York Times (January 22, 1933) : link (paywall)
brings to (this) mind Roy Jacobsen, the first of his Ingrid Barrøy novels The Unseen (Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, trans., 2013, 2016)
—
Ole Edvart Rølvaag (1876-1931)
wikipedia : link