Boo's Bow

THE LONG DREAM -- Sigrid Boo -- Dutton ($2.50).

Americans think of Norway as a cold slice of northern forest and fjord, of Norwegian writers as weighty (like Sigrid Undset) or gloomy (like Knut Hamsun). But a Norwegian novel published this week is as different from this preconception as its author's startling name. It could have been written in any country of Europe.

An Oslo Kathleen Norris whose eight books have been translated into 13 languages, Sigrid Boo (rhymes with Hoo) at 40 makes her first U. S. bow with The Long Dream. As befits the country that originated the langlauf (long-distance ski race), her novel is slow in starting, spends nearly half its length on the heroine's retrospective thoughts during a train journey back to her native town after seven years' absence.

Novelist Boo weaves a leisurely ring around the triangle of Dagrun Styhr, her husband, Paul, and Steffen Thomasgard, the man whom Dagrun had first loved and whom she returns to see. So slow-paced is the book that even its climax, when Dagrun and Steffen are marooned overnight on a deserted island, seems unexciting. Sigrid Boo thinks her book would make a good movie, hopes that fellow Scandinavian Garbo will play the lead. It would take the Garbo face and voice to put umph in such a gentle boo.

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