A review by booksnailmail
Magma by Thora Hjörleifsdóttir

challenging dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

“Words: He’s a master at turning my words against me. He remembers everything better than I do - he just takes the most uncharacteristic thing I’ve said…

In Magma, we find 20 year old Lilja enamored with a seemingly pragmatic and intelligent older man who drives their relationship. However, Lilja’s frankness on the page begins to unravel truths about her relationship which she attempts to handle with ironic voyeuristic humor at her own expense. She recounts the humiliations of sex alongside to the pleasures, hand in hand, to seemingly bring us in on the joke. If she brutalizes herself on the page before us, maybe we can collectively deny the sinister manipulation of her relationship. She tries to transform what is brutal to banal.

The novel seemingly follows a non-plot, there is no beginning, middle or resolution. There is simply Lilja before her boyfriend, and Lilja after. As readers, we are forced to approach with concern. We must deflect Lilja’s nauseating attempts at humor, and scream for her safety. No one else in her life will. Eventually though, Lilja meets us at our concern. She too wonders if she will survive her relationship, and attempts to collect the scraps of herself she has left. 

Hjörleifsdóttir writes a complex narrative with poetic concision, throughout it all delicately balancing the narrative voice of an immature young woman. I read this novel in an afternoon, but find myself ruminating on it weeks later. I found it interesting that Lilja is named in the novel, while the boyfriend is not. Lilja’s humanity is developed, and her boyfriend’s remains hazy. The point must be taken though, that we don’t really need to know him to understand his sin. The author leaves us no room to make excuses or find morality in his actions. The novel centers Lilja, no matter how dizzying the consequence.
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