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ioanaracautanu2403's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.25
michichigo's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
TW: Rape, Domestic violence
This book is a prime example for When Men Write Women. It is bad. Everything in the main protagonist Herra’s life is about sex and men. Every phase of her life is sexualized for no reason, starting with her sexual awakening as a child. Reading how a young girl masturbates for the first time and knowing all of that‘s from a male perspective made me very uncomfortable. Later in the book, after she got raped and is still sore from the assault, she‘s immediately smitten by the next guy and craves to have sex with him. WTF.
In general, I found Herra to be very unlikeable, conceited and bitter. She scams people on social media, meddles in her sons’ lives and oversteps their personal boundaries. No wonder they didn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore.
And why does a 400 pages book have 120 chapters? I understand it was a stylistic choice but what was the purpose? All it did was disrupting the reading flow when a new chapter starts every 2 pages. The jumps between the time lines weren’t quite clear either, sometimes both past and present were combined in one chapter.
All in all, this was very disappointing and poorly written. At least the cover is pretty so there’s that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Domestic abuse
glrreid's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
abookishtype's review against another edition
4.0
After the life she’s had, it’s probably not a surprise that Herbjörg María Björnsson (better known as Herra) is living out her last months alone in a garage with only the internet to keep her company. She was a mostly absent mother. Her father was in the SS. She curses, smokes, and sleeps with whoever takes her fancy. But the more I learned about Herra in Hallgrímur Helgason’s Woman at 1,000 Degrees (translated by Brian FitzGibbon), the more I pitied and understood her struggles against conventionality. Her story is a wild, fascinating, moving journey across most of the twentieth century...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
ejg92's review against another edition
4.0
Drepfyndin á köflum. Hnittni og tungumálaæfingar eru styrkleikar bókarinna... og höfundar. Framvinda sögunnar er ekki sú merkilegasta, en að sama skapi er hún ekki hryggjarstykkið í verkinu. Nokkurs konar bútasaumur. Mögulega hafa nokkrir kaflar verið samdir í kringum staka brandara. Hera Björnsson er samt æðislegur karakter. Allar senur sem gerast í Breiðafirðir eru mjög góðar, þær eru sömuleiðis styrkur bókarinnar. Bílskúrssenurnar líka traustar. Ég veit ekki hvað er satt og hvað er skreytt í þessari sögu, það fauk illilega í Björnsson fjölskylduna man ég, en fyrir mitt leyti nálgaðist ég bókina sem hreinan skáldskap.
Ég skulda Hallgrími afsökunarbeiðni. Þegar bókin kom út fannst mér Hallgrímur sjálfumglaður plebbi, titillinn ömurlegur og kápan alveg skelfileg. Núna finnst mér Hallgrímur bara vera sjálfumglaður, titillinn hefur ekkert skánað og kápan þykir mér jafnvel verri.
Ég skulda Hallgrími afsökunarbeiðni. Þegar bókin kom út fannst mér Hallgrímur sjálfumglaður plebbi, titillinn ömurlegur og kápan alveg skelfileg. Núna finnst mér Hallgrímur bara vera sjálfumglaður, titillinn hefur ekkert skánað og kápan þykir mér jafnvel verri.
asmyr42's review against another edition
5.0
By turns deliciously absurd and searingly honest, this first person telling of an Icelandic girl and woman making her way through the world grabbed me by the throat and commanded my attention. Sometimes I laughed out loud. Sometimes certain fluids leaked from my eyes. This is my second rendezvous with this author, and I am further drawn into his orbit.
tonstantweader's review against another edition
4.0
Herra is eighty years old, riddled with cancer, and ready to die. So ready she calls up the crematorium and makes an appointment, but first, she will take some time to review her life–an alarmingly eventful and unlikely life.
If Hallgrïmur Helgason had not based Woman at 1000 Degrees on the life and memoirs of Brynhildur Georgia Bjornsson, the granddaughter of Iceland’s first president. Helgason serendipitously called her while phone canvassing for his wife’s campaign, it would be easy to think Herra was too incredible, but truth can be stranger than fiction.
With sardonic humor and frank honesty, Herra assesses her life and her many loves. She’s more or less alone–living in a garage, neglected by her children which she thinks is fair since she often neglected them. She recalls the many men in her life, her travels, and her travails. At first, it seems like it will be a sarcastic recollection by an unrepentant and self-indulgent femme fatal, but she’s just warming up before getting to the hard stuff.
And the hard stuff is hard. Her father is seduced by the strong-man appeal of Hitler and enlists in the SS even though he’s Icelandic. The family is separated, her mother going to work as a housekeeper, her father in the army, and Herra sent to an island away from the war. However, when a planned family reunion in Berlin is disrupted, she is stranded, alone, a child who must figure out how to survive during World War II Germany. Her story is harrowing, a remarkable example of survival against all odds.
I enjoyed Woman at 1000 Degrees very much, though it took some doing to get into the story. I nearly quit about fifteen percent of the way through, thinking I didn’t much like Herra and who cares about all the men she slept with, but that’s just because she’s gearing herself up for the tough stuff. She’s not exactly a nice person, she catfishes on the internet, she talks about neglecting her children for men and travel and it’s only when you get to know her story that it begins to make sense.
I received an e-galley of Woman at 1000 Degrees from the publisher through NetGalley.
Woman at 1000 Degrees at Algonquin Books, Workman Publishing
Hallgrímur Helgason author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/9781616206239/
If Hallgrïmur Helgason had not based Woman at 1000 Degrees on the life and memoirs of Brynhildur Georgia Bjornsson, the granddaughter of Iceland’s first president. Helgason serendipitously called her while phone canvassing for his wife’s campaign, it would be easy to think Herra was too incredible, but truth can be stranger than fiction.
With sardonic humor and frank honesty, Herra assesses her life and her many loves. She’s more or less alone–living in a garage, neglected by her children which she thinks is fair since she often neglected them. She recalls the many men in her life, her travels, and her travails. At first, it seems like it will be a sarcastic recollection by an unrepentant and self-indulgent femme fatal, but she’s just warming up before getting to the hard stuff.
And the hard stuff is hard. Her father is seduced by the strong-man appeal of Hitler and enlists in the SS even though he’s Icelandic. The family is separated, her mother going to work as a housekeeper, her father in the army, and Herra sent to an island away from the war. However, when a planned family reunion in Berlin is disrupted, she is stranded, alone, a child who must figure out how to survive during World War II Germany. Her story is harrowing, a remarkable example of survival against all odds.
I enjoyed Woman at 1000 Degrees very much, though it took some doing to get into the story. I nearly quit about fifteen percent of the way through, thinking I didn’t much like Herra and who cares about all the men she slept with, but that’s just because she’s gearing herself up for the tough stuff. She’s not exactly a nice person, she catfishes on the internet, she talks about neglecting her children for men and travel and it’s only when you get to know her story that it begins to make sense.
I received an e-galley of Woman at 1000 Degrees from the publisher through NetGalley.
Woman at 1000 Degrees at Algonquin Books, Workman Publishing
Hallgrímur Helgason author site
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/01/18/9781616206239/
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