Each of the stories in Torgny Lindgren's Merab's Beautyis a small gem of a portrait -- a cross-section of a Northern Swedish agricultural community mostly in the first third of the 20th c. The volume is soaked with piety, guilt, hard-work, and passion -- touched by TB and the world wars -- but hardly at all by technology or the outside world. The tone is more lyrical than grim, but I could have used a bit more sunshine by the time I finished. And, while I appreciate the iridescence of a good story, I'm not really fond of reading a whole collection at once, no doubt why it took me a month to finish this slim volume. ( )