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A review by evamalta
Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson
Bought this book at Reikjavik airport - l had some time to kill before my flight and, naturally, wandered into the bookshop and thought that it was the perfect opportunity to buy something from an Icelandic writer.
The experience I had in Iceland, road tripping for a week, surely helped me to better imagine and visualise the story, but also, to understand it.
Summer Light, and then Comes Night is a story about an Icelandic village told by the village itself. “We” is the collective voice that tells you about the individual “I”s that live in the village, in a story that explores human nature, in all its natural emotions to its supernatural experiences:
A mystery created by dreams, a family tragedy, a haunted warehouse, an illicit affair gone sour, lovers separated and rejoined, people being happy with the small things, people being desperate with the small things, an anxious person that wonders about the mummies from 4000 years ago.
The authors writes in an interesting way (that kind of reminded me of Portuguese author Saramago, due to the personal use of punctuation). The writing is descriptive, funny and poetic, and the reading experience is very enjoyable.
After being in Iceland, I could better understand how magic realism is the only way to really tell a story about life in the island - of the nature, isolation, and the dichotomy of light and dark. It is a magical place indeed, that can be romanticised or demonised, as the reality is probably both.
The experience I had in Iceland, road tripping for a week, surely helped me to better imagine and visualise the story, but also, to understand it.
Summer Light, and then Comes Night is a story about an Icelandic village told by the village itself. “We” is the collective voice that tells you about the individual “I”s that live in the village, in a story that explores human nature, in all its natural emotions to its supernatural experiences:
A mystery created by dreams, a family tragedy, a haunted warehouse, an illicit affair gone sour, lovers separated and rejoined, people being happy with the small things, people being desperate with the small things, an anxious person that wonders about the mummies from 4000 years ago.
The authors writes in an interesting way (that kind of reminded me of Portuguese author Saramago, due to the personal use of punctuation). The writing is descriptive, funny and poetic, and the reading experience is very enjoyable.
After being in Iceland, I could better understand how magic realism is the only way to really tell a story about life in the island - of the nature, isolation, and the dichotomy of light and dark. It is a magical place indeed, that can be romanticised or demonised, as the reality is probably both.