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A review by foggy_rosamund
The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness
3.0
Ulga is from a small hamlet in northern Iceland: she travels to Reykjavik in order to work as a maid in the house of a politician. Ulga also wishes to learn the harmonium, so she can play in the church her family is saving to build for their community. Learning to play music introduces Ulga to a whole cast of peculiar characters, including two men who think that they are gods. This is my third Laxness novel, and the strangest I have read so far. Many of the conversation are very absurdist, putting me in mind of Beckett, while other elements of the novel are concerned with very practical issues, like abortion or alcoholism. This is also a Cold War novel: America wants to "buy" Iceland, or at least be allowed to build an atomic base there, in order to be closer to the USSR. The characters feel that they are on the brink of losing their country, their sense of self, and of annihilation in a time of nuclear war. This pushes them to strange mental spaces, such as thinking of themselves as gods, or feeling completely detached from the people around them. Ulga doesn't share this conviction: she grounds the novel, as she cares about practical matters, as well as her own personhood and her attachment to the north of Iceland. But I found the final section of the novel confusing and elliptical, and Ulga's perspective seemed to shift so we lost the sense of her as an individual. This made me lose my connection with the story. I think Laxness is trying to do a lot of interesting things in a very small space, and juggling a lot of different themes: at times this is very beautiful, and at times it doesn't really pay off. However, he remains a stimulating and original writer.