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|summary=Not quite the expected saga, but an intriguing and vividly crafted Icelandic tale of love and death.|rating=3.54

|paperback=|hardback=1906694532|audiobook=|ebookisbn=9781849164061

|publisher=MacLehose Press|date=September 2010|isbn=978-19066945312011|amazonuk=<amazonuk>19066945321849164061</amazonuk>|amazonus=<amazonus>19066945321849164061</amazonus>|website=|video=|summary=The salty life of an Icelandic fisherman meets the salt-of-the-earth yet incredibly poetic narration in this literary piece.

IcelandMake no mistake, somewhen about a century agohowever, this book is not on the track of imitating just one proponent of the existential. Five men It certainly carries on every page, and a young lad set out in their tiny oar- and sail-powered fishing boatevery sentence, for codan inimitable Icelandic flavour. On board are people with Even the strength to take part in a solid twelve-hour shift - rowing four hours to narration is rarefied – at times it certainly makes you aware it is the fishing banks, staying there stably for the lines, then hauling them in and rowing home. And thatcollective 'we's not to factor in any temperament provided by a nation of the weatherdead. Unfortunately it's not only knowledge This existence allows the voice of fishing these people have taken on board, for Icelandic men still like the book to dream of lovebe both incredibly poetic and literary, gaze nightly at the moon at the same time as their belles, and read stories yet also bluntly matter-of gods-fact, romance and legendalways with an immersive present tense. It's a pity then these distractions will be fatal for 'A dead man is so much heavier than one of who lives, the boysparkling memories have become dark, heavy metal's five companions..', we are told.

The first thing This, then, is an eminently rich read, one notices about this book is the tellingthat can patter through one's vision, which tries or linger in its own way to be a legendary tale of some romanceglacial grandeur. Characters come and go, events are drily portrayed, drastic and dramatic thoughts are registered by the narrator, and a kind still the mood of god itself. The highly stylised narration actually seems to the piece comes across, in what must be from some ghosts, using first person plural to say why this tale is being tolda brilliant translation. It's a rarefiedone of those short-seeming, poetic tellingbut absorbing, one reads that bursts takes a lot into a form of authoritative definition ("account in the writing, the reading and the heart isreckoning..." I wasn't too keen on the vaguer elements, or the lack of surprise held elsewhere, "men are...") as much as it can absorb and present a wispier kind late chapter that has us dwell on the histories of some people and buildings in the village through the thoughts of flashbacka minor character was a bit disposable, or cutaway to those on landbut all the same.

And once on land the longer This is a distinctive little novel, of the two sections sees the boy venture out to resolve his issues surrounding his horror at the death, and possibly his own innocence and naivety about love at the same timesome distinction.

For me the first section was the more compelling with the nature of these lives so finely wrought. We envy them nothing in their labours, save the simplistic emotions of success we might hope to share with them. Life then is conveyed supremely, from the rules of the fishermen to the emotional lives of those they leave behind. I had flashbacks of must thank the Icelandic firewater brennivin every time it was mentioned, publishers for all here smacks of realismmy review copy.

For me part two was not so memorable. A tautness was lost, and the narration did not quite survive the switch from telling us about a way of life to making us meet too many landlubbing characters too quickly. They have slight quirks and so on that make them seem real - especially the dipsomaniac sea captain - but I had to work on logging who was whom, while thinking where both the boy (who by the way remains nameless throughout) and book were going. That was a thought process I should not have been given the time and space for. But I have to mention the fact that any reader will be working with this novel. This has the style of the lengthy, unusually-punctuated sentences. They don't reach the excesses of some, but copious times you are bewildered by the number of clauses in the sentences. When this works it adds a depth to the narration, and the ghosts become a lot more chatty, and all the stronger entities for it. When it doesn't work they become merely stranger entities. So it's their voice you hear at the book's opening and close, with a gamut of emotions completely differenr adventure in between. And they carry on their vocal cords an awful lot of the soul of rural, historical Iceland, meaning that for all the dubiously large switch in nature from part one to part two, and for all the effort needed to stick can be had with every imbalanced, hanging clause, this has a soul, an interesting, earthy feel and singular approach that means it is still worth recommending to the reader of more literary fiction. I must thank the kind Maclehose Press people for my review copy. We don't know of much Iceland-based fiction to similarly recommend, but we did enjoy [[Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice) by Michael Ridpath]]. The mood of Mr Stefansson's book is probably more akin to [[Ice Land I Remember You by Betsy TobinYrsa Sigurdardottir]].  {{amazontext|amazon=1906694532}} {{waterstonestext|waterstones=7577839}}