To pick up and read Moa Martinsons' book,My Mother Gets Married will enable the reader to see a different version of Sweden than they have received from ABBA, The Farmers Daughter or Ann Margaret. This is an intensely harsh view of rural Sweden. Written from the authors point of view as a child, one sees through her eyes social injustice, intense poverty and alchohalic breakdowns. There is a tender quality in the protagonist that draws the reader in and makes the book difficult to put down. The honesty of the author in viewing her difficult past puts the reader in her shoes (Which by the way, she doesn't always have) and walk the dusty road of her childhood. Her feelings are so intense that you worry about her when you close the book and need to open it again to make certain she is going to make to the next page.

Moa Martinson's work was long overlooked, even in Sweden. The publication of two of her works in English is important (the other is My Mother Gets Married), but unfortunately, this translation misrepresents the text in significant ways. Women and Appletrees borders on brilliant in the original language--linguistically, structurally and thematically it was a totally original and totally ground breaking piece of fiction. Martinson quite literally wrote the female body. This translation makes the characters sound like some kind of Garrison Keillor-inspired Minnesotan Lutherans saying "ja" at the beginning of every sentence, instead of the edgy and impassioned proletariats that they really are. I would still recommend that you read the book for its insights into the struggles of the women of the working class--a rarity in literature of any national origin--but take the translation with a grain of salt.

Women and Appletrees is the translation of a novel by a Swedish woman writer. It is a marvelous and absorbing collection of descriptive writing about the human experience. This is a working class novel set in a time period when women had no reproductive options and little say in setting the course of their own lives. These individuals experience poverty, hardship, illiteracy, bad sanitation and the desperation of unmarried and too-fertile motherhood, both urban and rural. This is a captivating story about human survival, the perils of marriage, and finally, friendship. Adult themes throughout. NOT a children's book.