Unquiet

There are parts of Linn Ullmann's fictional account of her adolescence and parents, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, that are effective in showing how two peculiar and talented people went about the task of  parenthood. Bergman was mostly absent, but by this account was no less a loving father, if sometimes cold. The sections about the father's decline and death are affecting and revealing. There is, however, in Unquiet a good deal of material written from the point of view of a girl that amounts to a retelling of ordinary childhood events with no real payoff. As in her previous novel, then, a certain flabbiness is unfortunately evident.