One of the best translations I've read...
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I completely disagree with iviehoff's comment below about the translation. I found it to be beautifully done, lyrical and unforced, conveying the nuances of Icelandic whilst seeming natural in English. And pretty much every critic agrees with me. So don't let that put you off; this is a great, great book.
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Northern tragedy
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I read Independent People a year ago. I am interested in the strength of feeling sparked off by this book, as can be seen in nearly all these reviews: very few books spark off such passion and such a multitude of responses! I agree with one of the main points found in the reviews: it's a book that remains with you permanently. Personally I ended with a real dislike of Bjartur, for his cruelty and intransigence. It was very interesting to read Njal's Saga and Laxdale Saga at the same time, this helped with understanding Bjartur's inner world. Apart from the main character's tale, the novel powerfully paints a landscape, a culture and human tragedy. Unforgettable sequences abound, for instance Bjartur's epic hunt and river crossing on the reindeer. Laxness manages to make you feel as much sorrow for the animals as the people. It remains in my mind one of the more inhospitable, but beautiful and moving reads. It may sound unlikely, but there is also a sense of humour lurking there as well.
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Forget your own world for a month or two....
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Where to start with this book? It is fantastic. The world portrayed is a microcosm where every little movement, everysign is heavy with meaning. It is a slow burner but underneath the characters frosty, terse words a whole gamut of fragility, power and desire is worked out. It can seem impenetrably exotic, a strange misty hinteland of the human soul, but it is worth the effort. It is hard to believe people can endure so much with aparrent equanimity, and then you realise two or three hundred pages later that they didn't after all. One qualm only- this is not a quick read, or a dip in and out kinda book. It really requires effort at times, but you get what you pay for in this case. Brilliant!
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The book of my life
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There are no sufficient words to describe my love for this book. It is without a doubt the greatest novel I have ever read, and I continue to savour every re-read, gaining a little more understanding and a little more devotion to it each time. I won't describe the plot, since it has been done before. I will stress the beauty of the writing, which is overwhelming at times. It is not a roller coaster of a book, it is a long, slow journey into the 'labyrinth of the human soul'. Melancholic, but often hilarious, it is impossible to describe to someone who has not read the book the way it feels. All I can do is sincerely reccomend that you read it and discover for yourself. I do not guarantee that you will love it, but from reading the reviews on here, it seems the majority of people are touched as I was. This book may very well change your life. It is a travesty that it is so little known.
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Just stunning...
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It is the beauty of the writing, juxtaposed with the harshness of the subject which is so striking about this book. My origins lie in Northern Scotland, where, for centuries, people scraped out a meagre existence as crofters, in an unforgiving environment not unlike Iceland. Families, including my own, were decimated by death, emigration and finally the great war, which, ironically, features in this book as a positive event which brought riches to Iceland previously undreamed of, and also allows Bjartur to embark on his final, ruinous bid for true self sufficiency. The cheapness, baseness and brutality of Bjartur's struggle for independence is conveyed in a language so beautiful that no review could do it justice, but underneath Bjartur's stubborn, unsentimental hide, there lurks a suppressed humanity which outs itself in the book's final moving paragraph. Bjartur assesses his own worth only as a measure of his attainment of independence, but is finally overcome by his own humanity. In the final paragraph, Bjartur's teak tough exterior finally cracks, and we are left with a pathetic image of a ruined, peniless hill farmer, carrying the only thing of true value in his life (by now dying) to his new, rented lodgings, pitiful posessions in tow. The idea of using Asta Solilja, the vulnerable daughter of Bjartur's first wife, as a vehicle for this is the true genius of the work. As she grows from a girl to a woman, she allows herself to feel love, and it is this which brings her into conflict with the immovable Bjartur. Their reunion is one of the best endings in any story. This is a novel, not only about Iceland, but about all those Atlantic communities from Northwest Spain through the Celtic fringes of Western France, up through England Ireland and Scotland all the way to Norway which clung on to their rainly, cold, infertile and rocky inheritances with stubborn doggedness for centuries. It is a memorial to their will, and to the unremitting tragedy and hardship of their lives. Perhaps this elevates it to something more than just a novel. People really lived like that until very recently, not only in Iceland, but even in this country.
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