Memoir Monday and… So Long Marianne by Kari Hesthamar

"At 22, Marianne Ihlen travelled to the Greek island of Hydra with writer Axel Jensen. Axel wrote and Marianne kept house, until the day Axel abandoned her and their newborn son for another woman. One day while Marianne is shopping in a little grocery store, in walks a man who asks her to join him and some friends outside at their table. He introduces himself as Leonard Cohen, then a little-known writer.

Thus starts a love story that lasts through most of the 1960s and which takes them to Oslo, Montreal and New York and back to Hydra. Meanwhile, Cohen writes “So Long, Marianne,” one of the most beautiful love songs of all time. Peppered with previously unpublished poems, letters, and photographs, So Long, Marianne is an intimate, honest account of Marianne’s journey and a portrait of the international artists’ colony on Hydra in the 1960s."

I'm not a fan of Leonard Cohen, but I am a fan of young love, and this story just struck me. When I read this quote from a telegram sent from Leonard to Marianne shortly after they met, I knew I had to read the book…
                         
                    “Have house. All I need is my woman and her son. Love Leonard.”

Is that just too romantic?! Now, I've read some reviews that say it's not the best written story, and that you need to be a Leonard Cohen fan to get through it, but I'm entering the game from a different perspective, so maybe it will be all different for me. In any case, So Long Marianne by Kari Hesthamar is on my TBR list!