Great ( )

Oooof. Reading the first part of this slim novel, it seemed to me I was reading a modernized animal fable. Told in poetic language we read about a blue fox, “the vixen”, being tracked through the winter Icelandic landscape of 1883 by a hunter, universalized as “the man”. And then the story explodes into something else, signified by two short lines:

She raises her head.
Reverend Baldur Skuggason pulls the trigger.

The following sections of the novel gradually spool out a horrific and, alas, an all too human sort of story, told in more traditional though still lyrically heightened prose. I had not looked at reviews before reading this; if I had, I would have seen my Goodreads friend Meike’s review which points out the etymology of the Icelandic word skuggabaldur, the novel’s original title in Iceland, which according to Wiktionary has the meanings:

1. An Icelandic folktale creature, the offspring of a tomcat and a vixen (or dog)
2. An evil spirit
3. An evildoer who anonymously does their evil

Icelandic speakers, or people who read smart Goodreads reviews, would thus know right away that the name Baldur Skuggason bodes very ill. I got to find out more gradually. The Reverend Baldur Skuggason has done something hideously evil, unspeakable, and Sjón twines together that brutal story with the safer language of fable, where the moral is guaranteed its victory in the end.

There’s an interesting exchange between Reverend Baldur Skuggason and the vixen that suggestively takes place in a cave (underneath a glacier, being Iceland!). Skuggason challenges the vixen to a debate about electricity. He claims that God materially makes up the world, and that it is thus particles of God that are transmitted through electric wires. To treat God in such a way is a degradation of His nature. The vixen replies that if God causes the light to shine, and if God furthermore is light, then God is shining forth from every lamp, and shouldn’t the Church desire that? The Reverend cynically replies, “Do you really believe, Madam Vixen, that the radiance from these electric bulbs of yours can penetrate the human soul?” He then stabs the vixen through the heart with a knife he has grabbed while the vixen was composing her reply.

Digging out of the cave through the snow right after, the Reverend calls out:

”Light, more light!”
But the closer the priest came to his goal, the less man there was in him, the more beast.

I think there’s enough suggested in these few pages to power several theology classes. ( )

I think this is one of those books that is improved if the reader is more in touch with the book's cultural origins. Its ending left me a bit puzzled. There is no denying the author's skill: I was drawn in by the characters and the descriptions. But it was a curiously constructed little book, nonetheless. ( )

This book made for a pretty short read and while I was impressed by how the story came together at the end, I was less than thrilled by the novel overall. There were elements I found interesting and moments which were compelling - the beliefs shared about Down syndrome in the 19th century were particularly appalling - yet the story felt confined and narrow in scope. It's possible, as this book was originally written in Icelandic, that something has been lost in translation. ( )

Interesting Icelandic tale of magical realism that is part fairytale and part mystery. I had to read the last part twice to understand the understated implications, and once I had the “aha” moment I decided that I quite enjoyed this magical little tale. ( )