Well, it’s my last Nordics post for the time being, and this represents my tenth read for Annabookbel’s NordicFINDS challenge, as well as my first for Kaggsy and Lizzy’s ReadIndies challenge (two in one: hooray!). I’m so chuffed that I’ve basically got through all but one of the books I picked out for the challenge (and that eight of the books were from my TBR Challenge, too), and the one I didn’t finish was that humungous book of sagas, which I have at least got off the shelves and started!

I don’t seem to have recorded on this blog when I bought this book, but I know that I saw a piece about it on the Reykjavik Grapevine and just had to buy it! (regular readers might have grasped that I’m a tiny bit obsessed with Iceland).

Vera Juliusdottir and Becca Parkinson (eds.) – “The Book of Reykjavik”

(10 September 2021)

This is a short set of pieces by a range of writers, more established and newer, about the inhabitants of Reykjavik, whether they’re older former farmers who are building a new life with their skills, middle-aged women having one last burst of freedom or younger people fretting about life and relationships. I was expecting something a bit darker and grittier, probably because of my last grim reads, but also thinking of “Reykjavik 101”, a novel I failed to finish years ago. So it was sort of as expected, but less hard to read than I’d anticipated.

Lizzy from Lizzy’s Literary Life read this recently and commented that she didn’t really find a sense of place in it as someone who didn’t know Reykjavik. I found I did have a sense of place, but I also do know Reykjavik fairly well, having been to this small city four times since 2014. And when I read it with her review in mind, I could see what she meant – saying you’re living in a little flat on the main street overlooking the bustling street or midnight revellers is all very well, but if you’ve not been there it’s hard to imagine. In fact, the area I didn’t know so well, the suburbs, was quite well-described in the story “Two Foxes” which is set in a new development, failed to be finished after the financial crisis, lying in lava fields and surrounded by half-built flats.

The editors state in their introduction that they were careful to include a gender balance in the authors, and the stories do reflect a good range of experiences, too. “Home” by Friða Isberg stood out for me as a great, universal piece about the fears of a woman walking home late at night, made specific by it being set in the half-twilight “white night” of the summer season when the sun never sets, and general again by the variety of fears and outcomes in each paragraph. A lot of the stories seemed to be interested in the light nights, actually, and the opportunities to be out and about, whether that is looking at foxes and thinking of memories or going to do a ritual on your own you used to do with your wife in whom you’re no longer so interested.

A good collection that I thoroughly enjoyed, however bleakly negative Sjon is about Reykjavik in the Foreword!

ReadIndies publisher note: Comma Press is an indie publisher based in Manchester which specialises in short stories and fiction in translation. This book is part of their Reading The City Series.

This was my ninth NordicFINDS read and was set in Iceland (in Iceland week!).

It was my first ReadIndies read.

This was TBR Challenge 2021-22 Quarter 2 Book 7/53 – 46 to go.