I thought for this month’s Travel Library, I’d choose an Icelandic book while I was in Iceland and read that. So off I went to Eymundsson and I stood in front of the shelf of English-language Icelandic books and dithered. I’ve read a couple by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, I’ve read Jar City (aka The Bog in the original Icelandic) by Arnaldur Indriðason and I’ve read a few – apparently out of order – by Ragnar Jónasson. I’ve read Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir and frankly, I’ve not been wildly in love with any of them. I’m not really into crime. There are a couple more by Auður Ava but I wasn’t in love with the one I’ve read and I wanted something different if at all possible.
I eventually settled for this one. It’s called Quake (and that is an affiliate link to bookshop.org). Actually, I didn’t realise I’d settled for this one until I got home and opened it. It’s not the book I thought it was. But it’s not crime and it’s not Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. It’s another Auður – Auður Jónsdóttir, who it turns out is the granddaughter of Halldór Laxness. If that name means nothing to you, he’s Iceland’s first (and so far only) Nobel Prize winner. In literature. Or to put it the 2023 way, nepo baby!
Quake is a story about a woman who has three major epileptic seizures within a day or so and her struggle with her memory and day-to-day life as she recovers. It’s tedious. Her mother and sister come to stay with her while her young son stays with his father. Mother and sister fuss about her but also kind of nag at her, she doesn’t want to admit there are so many gaps in her memory so they don’t understand that things are harder for her than she’s letting on and that maybe some of these things could wait a while, but they understand that things are bad enough that it’s unthinkable that she should be left alone or have her own child with her. I’m writing this when I’m less than halfway through because I’m in doubt about whether I’m going to finish it. Saga, for crying out loud, use your words! Stop making yours and everyone else’s lives so difficult! No, they don’t understand because you’re not telling them and they’re not psychic!
I think this is what you call literary fiction, which feels like fiction that doesn’t fit into any particular genre and perhaps in which nothing much actually happens. I almost exclusively read scifi/fantasy and old Girls’ Own/boarding school stories, both genres in which things happen. So far Saga has woken up in hospital, gone home and we’ve had a succession of chapters in which various people float around the house. Some meals have been consumed. That’s about it. I’m going to make an effort to finish it so I can finish this post but unless something major changes halfway through, I think I’m marking this as “2 stars, not for me (might be for you)”. It’s not unreadably awful, it’s just tedious and it’s not the kind of thing I personally enjoy.
Oh, it gets worse! The best friend turns up, Saga finally feels she can tell someone the truth, the whole truth, about her memory – and said best friend starts in on the accusing “I can’t believe you don’t remember why you’re divorced/your birthday party/all the things!”. Ok, Saga. You’re using your words and these awful people around you just aren’t listening. I’m still only halfway through and it’s just so frustrating. Nothing is actually happening except that a woman is having a major medical problem and no one seems to get it. Does this story have a point and therefore an ending? Can it have an ending? Can I get to it in the next 24 hours, before this post is due to be published?
I made it to the end!
Saga has been repressing some very dark childhood memories for a long time – at least, I think she has. She may just have been repressing them since the seizures. The sort of dark that you’d put a TW on it if you were going to chat about them in a blog. It takes a really dark turn. Yet by the time she remembers those memories and talks about them with her sister, you kind of feel like everyone’s just sweeping it under the carpet and going back to normal, except Aunt Elinborg who’s still holding a very understandable grudge against certain family members. Because of these memories, Saga & Johanna’s mother goes missing semi-regularly around the end of autumn but the daughters have never really questioned why. When they do realise why… like I said, we sweep it under the carpet.
Saga begins to discover why she divorced her ex and to regret that decision. She goes to see him to try to get back together and discovers a chain of traumatic events the day before the seizures, which no one ever says are highly likely triggers – she sees a child hit by a bus and doesn’t learn until now that he survives and is going back to football soon, her ex comes round to tell her he’s sleeping with their son’s playschool teacher and her best friend turns up with her newest girlfriend and gets Saga drunk – a seizure trigger when she was a wild teenager. After that, it all trails off.
That’s partly due to the translation. I was always taught “translate all and only the meaning” but both author and translator apparently view the translated novel as an entire different novel. See this extract from the appendix:
Right off the bat, Auður gave me permission to translate with my instincts, to make changes to the text, to assert myself as an author. She has maintained this throughout our relationship. “The translator is always an author,” she told me. And this text is very much changed. This English Quake is both mine and Auður’s.
The entire last chapter is missing from the Icelandic version, “a composite of text that had been excised from earlier chapters and the original ending, insights from neurologist Kari Stefansson, and my own imaginative writing with Auður’s guidance and her explicit permission and encouragement”. I’m deeply dubious about this. When I read in translation, I want to read the closest possible version to the original, and not something that the translator has merrily transformed into something unrecognisable. Translation is a fine art and not something I’d care to try my hand at but I don’t like “the text is very much changed” and “my own imaginative writing”. Is this, in fact, more readable in the original? So much of this is muddled and hazy and ok, you get the feeling of someone whose brain isn’t working properly right now, who can’t think straight but it doesn’t make for the sort of story I enjoy. I want there to be a plot, I want there to be a purpose and I want there to be an ending.
For what it’s worth, the first half of this book took the best part of a month to slog through and then I read the second half in about 36 hours but that’s more because the deadline for this post approached than that the story picked up. Nothing really happened. Saga had several seizures, then spent several days being fussed over and also picked at by family and friends, her mum went missing and was found while everyone continued to fuss and nag at Saga and then she was still divorced and that was it. “A compelling mystery” and “a stunningly vivid novel”, as it’s described on the back, don’t feel like they described the book I just read.
Let me redeem this post with some Icelandic literature that I have enjoyed. I adore the Saga of the Volsungs which is fairly short and absolutely packed with material JRRT “borrowed” for his books. If you’re into mythology, I’ll never not recommend the Eddas. The Prose (Younger) Edda is easier to read but the Poetic (Elder) Edda has got all the magic in it. It’s absolutely worth having a go at, with the caveat that I read it with a pencil in hand and one finger in the appendix for scribbling translations and explanations in the margins. I like the story of Egill’s Saga although I haven’t managed to read it – it’s Shakespearian, in that it’s magnificent and timeless and the stories are great but the printed format just doesn’t work for me. I’m not into crime but Yrsa Sigurðardóttir is a big name for a reason and I did quite enjoy Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series. Whatever I said above, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir is popular and I gather her books kind of straddle the line between chicklit and literary fiction. They have pretty Booktok-friendly covers. Iceland, I know you’ve got some fun plotty real scifi, fantasy and chicklit hiding in the Icelandic-language section. Can we have some of those translated? I’d love to read something that’s not crime or sagas.