The cover. That’s what a lot of reviews mention because, well, most people expected to read one kind of thing based on the cover and then got something else. Myself, I read Miss Iceland by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (ohd-thur ah-vah oh-lahfs-dah-tur—ish) because it was a book club read for one of the clubs I am committed to. And whatever I might have thought of the cover, I loved the book. When I waded in, for a while, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. But the further I went, the more I appreciated the writing style, the themes and characters, and, well, mostly the writing style and the cultural immersion.

Hekla was named after a volcano, and like the volcano, there are a lot of fiery depths under her usually calm surface. Hekla is a writer (aka poet), but it’s the 60s in Iceland and women aren’t allowed to be poets. Or make much money or have almost any job. Or walk down the street without being harassed (especially if you are as pretty as Hekla). So she moves to the city to write in secret. On one side of her is her best girlfriend, Isey, who got knocked up young and is trapped in a marriage that is doomed to produce many children, the stuff of her nightmares. On the other side of Hekla is Jon John, a gay man in 60s Iceland which is much worse even than being a woman. It’s more dangerous and deadly, too. How will any of these young dreamers survive their reality?

I was much more into this book than others I’ve read recently. The style is clear (although our relationship to the characters feels a bit wooly at times), clean and spare, literary and Icelandic-poetic (as far as I know). The narration is broken into tiny fragments and evolves until, by the end, it is almost poetry. I learned a lot while reading about the culture (in the 60s, anyhow), the food, etc., but also realized this is a culture I don’t know enough about to appreciate its literature in too much depth. The story is very tactile. Very moving. But also pretty hard: the way Hekla is treated in the 60s in Iceland as a woman is truly appalling and disturbing, and likewise the way that a gay man is treated in the 60s in Iceland it actually horrific. I was sick to my stomach a couple times.

I give it five stars. It’s literary, poetic, dysthymic, maybe bohemian. It’s also brutal in some ways, redemptive and beautiful in others. So many sacrifices must be made for the dream, even the dream of an average life. It’s difficult to describe this book. It’s also difficult to express what I like so much about it.

Here’s something interesting: out of a group of like 15 to 18 people at club, two people emphatically did not like this book. The rest of the group emphatically defended it. It actually felt like we were talking about two different books. So perhaps once in a while in a group of literary readers, you get a couple people who just don’t connect to this book in any way, just don’t get it. The rest of us will die on this hill.

Ya know, I have thought some about these two (ladies, one middle-aged and one older than that), and I think it is possible that the changes in perspective in literature over the past couple (few?) decades might be where they are missing the point of the book. They both kept saying that Hekla was “complaining” and that she was “self-absorbed” (and also pointless and obvious?) to which the rest of us responded with slack jaws. But this makes some sense if you think about third person omniscient (the POV of most of the stories through time) and first person, often present tense (the favorite POV of younger people who are incidentally getting older). If you are a reader who has not yet adjusted to this new-fangled POV, the perspective itself could cause you to hear the voice of the author and/or protagonist as complaining and self-absorbed. I think I’m on to something there.

Not that authors weren’t doing stream-of-consciousness long before now. Which is sorta what this book is.

But let’s move on. This is a translation. It was published in Icelandic in 2018, the English translation in 2020. As far as I can tell, it’s a beautiful translation, one that somehow retained the cadences of the language so well that I had the Swedish chef from the Muppets in my head between reading sessions. (Yes, Icelandic and Swedish are not the same, but they are more similar than Icelandic and American English.) The translation that we have available in the US at this point—the one that I read—is actually a British English translation, so there are two levels of translation happening. And yet…

Like Lisa (NY) from Goodreads said, “This slim, melancholic novel set in 1960s Iceland has lodged under my skin.” Yes, Lisa. Correct.

I’m with the reviewers who don’t think Hekla’s boyfriend was the scum of the earth. He was sucky a little, a product of his times, but he changed some, too. And Hekla was sucky sometimes, as well. She used him. She left him high and dry.

The ending is also controversial. I thought it appropriate, satisfying if a little bitter, a little sad.

Besides all the food that is mentioned in this poetic novel (and beware: much of the food sounds not so wonderful to us Americans), there are so many book titles and authors thrown around. For funsies, here is a list of the ones that I caught:

• Ulysses, James Joyce (Sveinbjorn Egilsson’s translation)
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
• Passion Hymns
• Lord Byron’s biography
• novel by Thomas Mann
• The Importance of Being Ernest
• poetry collection by Rimbaud
• poetry collection by Verlaine
• poetry collection by Walt Whitman
• Virginia Woolf book
• Emily Dickinson book
• Selma Lagerlof book
• Federico Garcia Lorca poetry
• Black Feathers, David Stefansson
• Glimpse of the Ocean, Einar Benediktsson
• The Magic Mountain
• Skirnir magazine
• Fjolnir journal
• Eimreid magazine
• Ragniheidur Jonsdottir children’s books
• Gudrum fra Lundi rural novels
• “The Snow Bunting,” Thorsteinn Erlingsson
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• To Kill a Mockingbird (movie)
• Cleopatra (movie)
• Two Women (movie)
• Lawrence of Arabia (movie)
• Njal’s Saga
• Grettir’s Saga
• Sturlunga
• Heimskringla
• Snorri’s Edda
• Wakeful Nights, Stephan G. Stephansson
• Jonas Hallgrimsson works
• Steingrimur Thorsteinsson works
• Hannes Hafsteinn works
• Laxness novel
• Gunnar Gunnarsson novel
• Thorberg Thordarson novel
• Paradise Lost, Milton (Jon a Baegisa translation)
• Hunger, Hamsun (translation)
• Laxdaela
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Second Sex
  Grimur Thomsen
• The People’s Will, Thjodviljinn newspaper
• “Love Me Tender,” Elvis (song)
• Bob Dylan (musician)
• Rachmaninoff (composer)
• Shostakovich (composer)
• Sermons for the Home, Bishop Vidalin
• Stein Steinarr
• Last Tales, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)
• Childhood Street, Tove Ditlevsen
• Light, Inger Christensen
• Requiem, Mozart (music)
• Thjodviljinn with Krushchev on the cover
• Paintings and Memories, Asgrimur Jonsson
• Saga of the Sworn Brothers
• Karitas Thorsteinsdottir
• Learn to Cook, Helga Sigurdardottur
• Asta Sigurdardottir short stories book
• Mother, Maxim Gorki
• Laxdaela Saga
• Jon Thoroddsen
• Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
• The Beatles (musicians)
• Gyldendals Store Danske Encyclopaedi
• The History of the Borg Family, Gunnar Gunnarsson
• Repetition, Soren Kierkegaard
• Danish-Icelandic dictionary, Sigfus Blondal
• Gunnlaugur Oddsson books
• Familie Journal
• Selma Lagerlof
• Andre Gide
• Thomas Mann
• The Bible
• Song of Songs

As for books like this one, I received recommendations for Olafsdottir’s Animal Life (especially for Christmas) as well as Burial Rights (Hannah Kent) and Independent People (Halldor Laxness). If I didnt have a TBR longer than a trip around my block, I’d go out and get these three books right now. They all have great reviews.

First, the author’s name has some accents and slashes through letters that I did not attempt to replicate here. Without the proper accents, her name is Audur Ava Olafsdottir, but that first d is not really a d. It’s an Icelandic letter that looks a bit like a d and sounds like a very quiet d and a th had a baby.

Audur is a long-time and well-respected writer in Iceland. She writes all of her stories in Icelandic.

Her books are:

• Raised Earth
• Butterflies in November
• The Greenhouse
• The Exception
• Scar
• Miss Iceland
• Animal Life
• Eden
• DJ Bambi

She has also written poetry and at least one play and is a professor of art history. A number of her novels have won awards, including Miss Iceland.

“It’s blatantly clear: humans can’t fly” (p35).

“It’s still almost invisible. Then it will grow and need to be born” (p91).

“In my dream world the most important things would be: a sheet of paper, fountain pen and a male body. When we’ve finished making love, he’s welcome to ask if he can refill the fountain pen with ink for me” (p93).

“’Both in equal measure,’ I answer. ‘I need to be both alone and not alone,’ I add. / ‘That means that you are both a writer and ordinary, Hekla’” (p93).

“’Did you know, Hekla,’ my sailor had said to me as he watched me writing, ‘that the typewriter was invented fifty-two times?’” (p116).

“The crime baffles the police, but then the woman steps in and solves the mystery. I made her find clues in the sandpit [sandbox], which the man had overlooked because police officers don’t search playgrounds” (p118).

“’Haven’t you told the poet you’re a writer yet?’ / She could just as easily have asked: Does he know about the wild beast that’s running loose inside you and waiting for you to release it? Does a poet understand a poet?” (p125).

“Men are born poets. By the time of their confirmation, they’ve taken on the inescapable role of being geniuses. It doesn’t matter whether they write books or not. Women, on the other hand, grapple with puberty and have babies, which prevents them from being able to write” (p126).

“Children are merciless, but adults are even worse” (p134).

“You’re the glacier that sparkles, I’m just a molehill. You’re dangerous, I’m innocuous” (p141).

“…a single sentence is more important than my body” (p145).

“You’d drain your own veins if you ran out of ink” (p158).

“A hole in the ice of the lake is expanding from day to day, but I nevertheless decide to test whether the sheet of ice can carry the weight of a woman and a manuscript in a shoebox” (p185).

“What I admire about you, Hekla, is that you have faith in yourself, even when nobody else does” (p193).

“…out at sea no man is any more of a man than any other” (p194).

“I want to sew, Hekla. The sewing machine is my typewriter” (p216).

“All days pass, all moments vanish” (p217).

“’There are many different types of marriages,’ he continues. ‘You’re my best friend. We’re both misfits’” (p222).

“P.S. I read the Sylvia Plath poem you sent me and it changed everything, I’m not the same person as I was before because it was about me” (p223).

“I’m strong and he is vulnerable, but he protects me in his own way” (p226).