Archive for Iceland noir
Icelandic landscape [#2]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags Arctic, hiking, Iceland noir, Kleifarvatn, lake, NBBC15 conference, Reykjanes Peninsula, summer on June 10, 2015 by xi'an
I remember you [not that fondly]
Posted in Books, Travel with tags Arnaldur Indriðason, ghosts, horror, Iceland noir, Rivers of London, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir on January 24, 2015 by xi'anI Remember You: A Ghost Story
is another Icelandic novel by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, that I bought more because it takes place in Iceland than because of its style, as I found the previous novel was somewhat missing in its plot. Still, I was expecting better, as the novel won the 2012 Icelandic Crime Fiction Award. Alas, I should have been paying more attention to the subtitle “A ghost story”, since this is indeed a ghost story of a most traditional nature (I mean, without the deep humour of Rivers of London!), where the plot itself is incomprehensible (or inexistent) without taking into account the influence and even actions of ghosts! I know I should have been warned by the earlier volume since there as well some characters were under the influence, but I had thought it was more of a psychological disorder than a genuine part of the story! As I do not enjoy in the least ghost stories of that kind, having grown out of the scary parts, it was a ghastly drag to finish this book, especially because the plot is very shroud-thin and (spoilers, spoilers!) the very trip and subsequent behaviour of the three characters in the deserted village is completely irrational (even prior to their visitation by a revengeful ghost!). The motives for all characters that end up in the haunted place are similarly flimsy… The connections between the characters are fairly shallow and the obvious affair between two of them takes hundreds of pages to be revealed. The very last pages of the book see the rise of a new ghost, maybe in prevision of a new novel. No matter what, this certainly is my last book by Sigurdardottir and I will rather wait for the next Indriðason to increase my collection of Icelandic Noir…! Keeping away from the fringe that caters to the supposedly widespread Icelandic belief in ghosts and trolls!!!
voices – strange shores [book review]
Posted in Books, Mountains, Travel with tags Arnaldur Indridason, book review, Furðustrandir, Iceland, Iceland noir, mountain storm, Röddin, Reykjavik on July 5, 2014 by xi'anFollowing my recent trip to Iceland, I read two more books by Arnaldur Indriðason, Voices (Röddin, 2003) and Strange Shores (Furðustrandir, 2010).
As usual, Indriðason’s books are more about the past (of characters as well as of the whole country) than about current times. Voices does not switch from this pattern, the more because it is one of the earliest Inspector Erlendur’s books. Besides the murder of an hotel employee at the fringe of homelessness, lies the almost constant questioning in Indriðason’s books of the difficult or even impossible relations between parents and children and/or between siblings, and of the long-lasting consequences of this generation gap. The murder iitself is but a pretext to investigations on that theme and the murder resolution is far from the central point of the book. The story itself is thus less compelling than others I have read, maybe because the main character spends so much time closeted in his hotel room. But it nonetheless fits well within the Erlendur series. And although it is unrelated with the story, the cover reminded me very much of the Gullfoss waterfalls.
The second book, Strange Shores, is the farthest to a detective stories in the whole series. Indeed, Erlendur is back to his childhood cottage in Eastern Iceland, looking for a resolution of his childhood trauma, loosing his younger brother during a snowstorm. He also investigates another 
snowstorm disappearance, interrogating the few survivors and reluctant witnesses from that time. Outside any legal mandate. Sometimes very much outside! While the story is not completely plausible, both in the present and in the past, it remains a striking novel, even on its own. (Although it could read better after the earlier novels in the series.) Not only the resolution of the additional disappearance brings additional pain and no comfort to those involved, but the ending of Erlendur’s own quest is quite ambiguous. As the book reaches its final pages, I could not decide if he had reached redemption and deliverance and the potential to save his own children, or he was beyond redemption, reaching another circle of Hell. As explained by the author in an interview, this is intentional and not not the consequence of my poor understanding: ” Readers of Strange Shores are not quite certain what to make of the ending regarding Erlendur, and I’m quite happy to leave them in the dark!”. If the main character of this series focussing more on missing persons than on detective work, what’s next?!
