I was surprised by how much Ullmann's portrayal of her father's last months affected me. In the patterns of his reasoning and speech I was reminded of my grandfather and my wife's grandfather at the same period in their lives. In fact, my grandfather was born the same year as Ullmann's father and died almost exactly two years after him. But because my grandfather rarely spoke to me and Ullmann's father was a public figure, unfortunately I know more about the latter than the former. ( )

Being a memoir of life with famed film and stage presences Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann by their daughter, a noted literary critic in her own right. Her reminiscences, puzzlingly, arrive billed as a novel, a status for which there is little if any evidence. If you have less cataloger's OCD than I and don't mind this anomaly, you'll find a book which is interesting, informative, and extremely well-written. The book is essentially an Ullmann sandwich; it begins with a short recollection of the small parts of her youth she spent with Bergman, proceeds to her growing up with Ullmann, and ends with an account of Bergman's last years and death, centered around a series of interviews which she recorded with him in his last weeks. Bergman's senescent musings occasionally achieve a certain delusional poetry, but mostly they're interesting only insofar as they mark the collapse of a powerful mind with old age, and thus are more than a little depressing. As for the total picture of the couple with which one leaves, I wouldn't call this quite a hatchet job, but neither do they come across particularly well. ( )

I came to this book through a New Yorker excerpt, and was wary because I liked the excerpt so much (and had listened to the author reading it with her beautiful accent). The book was as beautiful as the story. It is a fictionalized memoir of her relationship with her father, Ingmar Bergman, and mother, Liv Ullmann. Though the relationships are difficult and full of ego and sadness, the book is fond and funny, captured by the through line of her working with her mercurial father, trying to help him write his autobiography. ( )

De auteur kijkt terug op haar jeugd als kind vanntwee beroemde ouders: regisseur Ingmar Bergman en actrice/regisseuse Liv Ullmann ( )

Decided I'd read The Cold Song before I read this, only to discover I'd already read and reviewed it here in 2015! I guess that's how unmemorable it was. This was much much better - she may be a better memoir than novel writer. Or possibly it's the subject matter - how abandoned she was and felt by her mother; how eccentric her father was. All in all a great story in beautiful settings. ( )