The truism that good things come in small packages is affirmed by Ingvild Rishøi's Brightly Shining, an unexpected emotional force disguised by its small stature. It is also true of the novel's narrator, 10-year-old Ronja. Ronja is a burning ember, staying hopeful in the face of her father's alcoholism and the instability it brings. When he has a good stretch of sobriety, Ronja wants to believe, but her older sister, Melissa, knows the good days can't last: "He'd just been at work then come straight home, and I knew what Melissa was thinking, it won't go on like this, she thought, and yet it did."
When their father fails to keep his job at the Christmas tree market, Melissa takes it over, and their father, who looms so large in the opening chapters, drops to the periphery of the narrative. He is there, but sporadically--asleep on the couch, knocking over the hat stand, stumbling down the sidewalk outside Ronja's school--and never in the ways Ronja most needs him to be. Like a poet, Rishøi (translated from the Norwegian by Caroline Waight ) makes excellent use of repetition and distills her story into measured segments, equally denying the maudlin and the saccharine. Yet Ronja's voice is memorable and finely tuned to its surroundings, and readers will ache for her as others step in--for better and for worse--where her father is absent. Despite the darker side to Ronja's story, Brightly Shining radiates hope and goodness, a perfect companion for the holiday season. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian