This summer has been a whirlwind of activity so far, with friends’ and family BBQs hosted and a trip to Iceland, so this will be extra short, but I wanted to write about these books before I forgot them! I read three books and a bunch of Silver Birch contenders in July.
The first was The Lost House by Melissa Larsen, about a woman who, while she recovers from a surfing accident in California, goes to the small town in Iceland where her grandfather grew up to help solve the cold case of the murder of her grandmother and aunt, a mere infant at the time of her death. Her grandfather fled to America, which was considered proof of his guilt, although there was no concrete evidence to support this. But now Agnes returns to her ancestral home to join a true crime podcaster in order to find the truth and possibly clear her grandfather’s name. This was a so-so thriller that could have been so much better, in my opinion, if the characters were more credible and if the story wasn’t so uneven in terms of flow. A true crime podcaster looking into cold cases is a common plotline in many mystery-thrillers, and it had a great cast of characters as potential suspects, but I just couldn’t connect with Agnes and found her actions to be less-than-believable for most of the book. Still, it was interesting, fast-paced and complex enough to keep me reading to the very end.
The next book was Burial Rites by Australian author Hannah Kent, which was great! This historical novel explores the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person executed in Iceland in 1828 for her role in the murder of two farm owners. Orphaned at a young age, Agnes had been moved from one family and farm to another all her hard life, but, in her early 30s, she finally found a place where she thought she could be happy and loved. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned and here she finds herself, sent off to a family to await execution, since there were no prisons in Iceland in those days and it was too expensive to keep her in Denmark. The way Kent imagines Agnes’ time with the family, and her interactions with the young priest who is sent to help prepare her to meet her death, make up a large part of the story, along with her life story and the events leading up to her arrest. The archival documents interspersed throughout the book serve to remind readers that this is not a character in a book but a real person, making the story all the more poignant and moving. This was Kent’s debut novel, based on the story she heard about this case while in Iceland as an exchange student, and it was well-written and well researched, keeping me glued to the page until I reached the heartbreaking conclusion. I would highly recommend this novel.
And the last book I read was The Blue Fox by award-winning Icelandic novelist Sjon. This was the least straight-forward of the three books, and the only one written by an Icelandic author, but it was, in equal parts, interesting and strange. One section of this slim novel tells of an elusive blue fox who leads a hunter on a transformative journey, while another tells of a naturalist who struggles to build a life for a young woman with Downs’ Syndrome whom he found on a shipwreck years before. It was both a mystery and a fable, with magic realism thrown in, and I think I have to read it again to fully appreciate it, as it was very much outside my reading comfort zone. I read it because I brought his next book, Red Milk, on my trip, although I never had the chance to read it, as I was too busy taking in the beauty of that amazing island. I would recommend at least giving this award-winning author a try if you’re in the mood for a really thought-provoking, puzzling, transformative literary book that you can read in a couple of hours but that will stay with you for days.
That’s all for now. Back to reality and the rest of my Silver Birch reading before we make our final selections in a couple of weeks, so I may not have any books to write about for a while. Keep reading and enjoy the rest of the summer!
Bye for now… Julie
