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    From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel
    From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel
    From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel
    Ebook198 pages3 hours

    From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel

    By Sjón and Victoria Cribb

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    About this ebook

    From the Mouth of the Whale is an Icelandic saga for the modern age. The year is 1635. Iceland is a world darkened by superstition, poverty, and cruelty. Men of science marvel over a unicorn's horn, poor folk worship the Virgin in secret, and both books and men are burned.
    Sjón introduces us to Jónas Pálmason, a poet and self-taught healer, banished to a barren island for heretical conduct, as he recalls his gift for curing "female maladies," his exorcism of a walking corpse on the remote Snjáfjöll coast, the frenzied massacre of innocent Basque whalers at the hands of local villagers, and the deaths of three of his children. Pálmason's story echoes across centuries and cultures, an epic tale that makes us see the world anew.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9780374709945
    From the Mouth of the Whale: A Novel
    Author

    Sjón

    Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic author whose novels have been published in over thirty-five languages. He won the Nordic Council's Literary Prize for his novel The Blue Fox(the Nordic countries' equivalent of the Man Booker Prize) and the novel From The Mouth Of The Whale was shortlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The novel Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was received every literary prize in Iceland, including the coveted Icelandic Literary Prize. CoDex 1962, a novel in three books written over 25 years, was published in Iceland in 2016 to great acclaim. As a poet, librettist, and lyricist, Sjón has published more than a half dozen poetry collections, written four opera libretti, and lyrics for various artists. In 2001 he was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics in the film Dancer In The Dark. Sjón is the president of PEN International's Icelandic Centre and lives in Reykjavik with his wife and two children.

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    Reviews for From the Mouth of the Whale

    3/5

    86 ratings15 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It took a few attempts to really get into this story and in the end I am glad that I finished. There is a lot going on and so it is not a book that one can easily skim through. Jonas is a man exiled to a remote, barren island and the story is his thoughts on what occurred to bring him there. It is not an easy novel but if you are wiling to dig deep into the story, there is a thread of hope running through it.
    • 4/5
      I get very annoyed with all those TV shows set in the Middle Ages that are full of clean bodies, white teeth, dust-free floors and brightly-lit rooms. This is not a problem that From the Mouth of the Whale suffers from. Its appeal lies primarily in the dirt under its fingernails; it revels in the mess and violence and, also, the transcendence of its pre-modern milieu. It's a novel that smells of unwashed bodies and sea-salt.We're shown this world through the travels, visions and tribulations of Jónas Pálmason, a scholar-cum-magician-cum-natural-philosopher in seventeenth-century Iceland – ‘this unlovely splat of lava in the far north of the globe,’ as he calls it. Exiled by his political enemies to a remote uninhabited island off the coast (all islands are off the coast, Warwick), he reminisces about his life, research and the metaphysics of this worldly existence.Importunate with his own kind, garrulous with others…So might one describe the purple sandpiper and so men describe me…This is Jónas's voice – gruff and wordy and distinctive, marked by blurry, shifting thought processes and studded with practical knowledge, with flora and fauna, and with a worldview of almost Cabbalistic mysticism.Jónas is a fictional creation, but the quote above, where he compares himself to a purple sandpiper, is a clue to his real-life model, Jón Guðmundsson ‘The Learned’ (1574–1651). The old name in Icelandic for a purple sandpiper is fjölmóður, which was also the name of an epic poem that Jón wrote about his life. I can't find an English translation but it seems to have included major stories from this book including the exorcism of a ghost and the coming of Basque ships to Iceland; in a sense, this may be seen as a kind of expansive novelisation of Jón's poem.The real star of the English version of this book is its translator Victoria Cribb, who has produced something that feels natural and yet genuinely odd in all the right ways. An Old Norse scholar, she has said in interviews that she's not very comfortable translating most modern fiction and isn't sure of what the English terms are for a lot of social media or technology vocab. But here, in a world of old manuscripts, fishing traditions and magico-scientific theorising, she is clearly in her element.Though short, it's a thick, silty book that I felt I could wade right into; at the start I loved the experience, but I did find it a little exhausting towards the end just because there is not a lot in the way of plot to give the narrative focus. Rather, it expands in different directions according to occult criteria, its chief objective, perhaps, not to give shape to a story but to find formal connections between disparate parts of the world:The antlers of a hart, coral, spread fingers, birch twigs, a loosely knotted fishing net, crystals, river deltas, ivy, mackerel clouds, women's hair…diverse as these phenomena are, they all revolve around the invisible joints, their opposite forms touch even though they are far apart…It's a strange, windswept, mind-expanding little book, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a short but bracing read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book, the writing is beautiful, but I just disliked the main character too much. He's really douchy, and that ruined it for me. The first scene about lucifer was the best part. Couldn't get past the halfway point though.
    • 3/5
      The rhythm of Sjon's stream of consciousness style was a bit enchanting. The story of a man being persecuted for attempting to understand the workings of the world always needs to be told.
    • 1/5
      Abandoned at page 51: I just don't care how it turns out.
    • 4/5
      FROM MOUTH OF THE WHALEBY SJONAn Icelandic tale that takes place in the mid 1600’s. This is the story of one Jonas Palmason who lives an extraordinary life of tragedy, magic, torture and travail. His innate knowledge of the natural world gives him unique insight into the very essence of the natural order of life.Herbs, animals, how all living things are both connected and separate and how god’s hand created all, Jonas’ deep faith helps him to survive the superstitions of his fellow man who exile him to a barren island accompanied only by a shipwrecked tiny mouse.He retells much of his life’s journey, his marriage, his children some of whom died and the wonder of it all: life, land and sea, plant and creature, Jonas has a special wisdom that understands how it all works.This is a unique tale, a fable and more, that leaves the reader hauntingly mesmerized, not quite knowing what he has just read but thankful that he did.
    • 4/5
      I've generally not had very good luck when I try to get into Icelandic fiction, but Sjón's "From the Mouth of the Whale" (English translation by Victoria Cribb published by Telegram in 2011) was really quite an enjoyable read. Perhaps it was the historical nature of the narrative that appealed to me, or maybe the natural history elements that the author incorporated into the text. But I liked it. The stream-of-consciousness style worked for me in a way it usually doesn't, and Sjón's lyrical depiction of 17th-century Iceland is lovely. It helps, I'm sure, that the great historical character Ole Worm makes an extended cameo appearance.Definitely worth a try if you tend to like historical fiction with lots of natural history worked in.
    • 3/5
      In 17th Century Iceland, Jónas Pálmason's strange way of life casts him into a suspicion. His old pagan beliefs, superstitions, extensive learning, and naturalism are believed by many to be sorcery, and so he is sent into exile.When I saw the description of this book, I knew that I had to read it. I have read few books about Iceland, and certainly never one about Iceland in the 1600's. Also, the publisher is known for printing strange, atypical books that I more often than not find myself loving.Well, "From the Mouth of the Whale" was indeed strange, though not for the same reasons as the other books I had read. It was a stream of consciousness type of book, which I normally either love or hate. Here, I hated it. It prevented me from becoming absorbed in the book. Whenever I would put it down and then pick it back up again, I would find the style jarring, and it would take about 50 pages to get used to it. By then, it would be time to stop - and so it went until I finished, feeling sore as if I had just commenced a bumpy ride.It's a shame, because if not for the distracting writing style, I think that I could have really enjoyed this book. I think that naturalism can be quite interesting, especially in a historical setting. And Sjon often included intricate plot descriptions of animals that directly related to the story or characters. Also, I loved the opening scene, in which Lucifer first meets man. Sjon's version of a young Satan is a son of God, which I found intriguing. Satan is Jesus' brother? It sounds like a story. Satan's foreboding feeling regarding man, predicting their selfishness and insistence on destroying the rest of God's creation, was apt and insightful.I was annoyed that Lucifer never again appeared in the story, and his cameo seemed irrelevant except for proving a point.There were other enticingly interesting little things scattered throughout the book. Learned scholars study "unicorn's horns" and "mermaid sculptures," actually narwhale tusks and coral. Jónas' superstitions and pagan beliefs were intriguing. Occasional paragraphs about natural things pepper the story, almost always intertwined with magic. Jónas compares himself extensively to a sandpiper - does this mean something?Everything I felt mildly interesting in this book never led to anything, and it was never enough to overpower the distaste I felt toward the writing style.I wouldn't recommend this book unless you personally love stream of consciousness novels. If so, there is plenty to be enjoyed. However, if you, like me, find the writing style more likely to range from distracting to infuriating, it would perhaps be best to skip this one.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book - I like historical fiction and Iceland is a really interesting country, so I thought Icelandic historical fiction would be really interesting. But I just could not get into it, the writing style was really annoying. The book is full of long rambling paragraphs sprinkled with ellipses, which are just hard to read and made it unclear what was happening. It's possible that people who really like fiction written in a stream of consciousness style would like From the Mouth of the Whale, but it is definitely not for everyone.
    • 2/5
      I feel completely unqualified to review this because I've never read anything like it before and I didn't understand half of it. It was difficult for me to piece a time line together or separate fact from fantasy or figure out even the basics of what was going on -- all the more so since the book had very few paragraphs and also, for the most part, lacked proper sentences. Most sentences ended with an ellipsis instead of a period. Apparently a sizable number of people who read this book thought it was wonderful, and it won an important literary prize, but it just left me bewildered.
    • 4/5
      It took a few attempts to really get into this story and in the end I am glad that I finished. There is a lot going on and so it is not a book that one can easily skim through. Jonas is a man exiled to a remote, barren island and the story is his thoughts on what occurred to bring him there. It is not an easy novel but if you are wiling to dig deep into the story, there is a thread of hope running through it.
    • 3/5
      "A medium-sized fellow ... Beady brown eyes set close to his beak within pale surrounds ... The beak itself quite long, thick and powerful, with a slight downward curve at the end, dark in colour but lighter at the top ... No neck to speak of; a spry stocky figure with short, tapering legs, a barrel chest and a big belly ... Head a dark grizzled brown, with a ruff extending from nape to mid-crown ... Clad in a grey-brown coat of narrow cut, with a faint purple sheen in the twilight; bright stockings, a speckled undershirt ... Importunate with his own kind, garrulous with others ... So might one describe the purple sandpiper and so men describe me ... I can think of many things worse than being likened to you, my feathered Jeremiah, for we have both crawled from the hand of the same craftsman, been carved with the same knife: you quickened to life on the fourth day, I on the sixth..."Thus does Jónas Palmason's introduce himself when the story begins, in the autumn on 1635. Divided into four parts, ending with the Spring Equinox of 1639, the novel moves between Jónas' stream of consciousness, wherein bits and pieces of his past and present mingle in a confused and confusing soliloquy about what led him to be abandoned on an island off the coast of Iceland, and a central section where the crux of the story is told in a more straightforward narrative. Known as Jónas the Learned by some, he is a self-taught healer and a poet who has been exiled on charges of heretical conduct. A successful exorcism has earned him a good reputation in a time when superstition abounds and many still believe in unicorns and other mythical creatures, but his fate is sealed when he shows opposition to the local magistrate who is intent on carrying out his plan to massacre innocent Basque whalers. The novel is beautifully written and full of evocative and poetic imagery. The massacre is harrowing, but again interspersed with imaginative sequences. My main problem with this novel is that I felt utterly lost in the first section, as I imagine is the intention of the author, perhaps to render Jónas' own state of mind? but too much of what is said here was completely lost on me, and I quickly started feeling like I was just reading this book because I needed to write a review about it. Then the two middle sections were exactly what I imagined this novel could be like based on the short blurb I'd read about it and which had made me think I might enjoy this book. Here Jónas clearly describes the harrowing night of the massacre of the whalers which led to his banishment, as well as a trip to Denmark where he meets the fascinating Dr. Worm, who hires him as one of his research assistants to catalogue his unlikely collection of curios, and tries and fails to get our man acquitted. But then again, the final section with more vague recollections, from which other parts of narrative painfully emerge, felt frustrating more than anything. Here, the following words made me think perhaps I wasn't being quite patient enough: "I lean back in bed, stretching my arms and cracking my joints ... The mouse is still huddled cosily by the fire; it is quite extraordinary how she puts up with my ramblings ... The vetch porridge has hardened in the bowl; I scrape out the leftovers and scatter them on the floor ... In a place of entertainment like this it is the storyteller who must pay his audience rather than the other way round ..." Now that I’ve gotten the lay of the land, I see this is the kind of book that I might enjoy more on second reading, though I’m not sure it would be quite worth the effort given there are so many other books on my shelves calling out to me...
    • 4/5
      It took me a little while to understand the story because it is so lyrical and uses imagery and metaphors. I tried to take it too literal in the beginning, but when I let that go and embraced the poetry, I enjoyed it. Although it was bleak and with little hope, it was the small things that gave life beauty and a reason to carry on.
    • 3/5
      A bleak tale of early 17th century Iceland, told by an old man banished to solitary exile after his conviction for witchcraft. The story is told primarily in a stream-of-consciousness, and there is little that is positive or beautiful in Jónas Pálmason’s mind or memory. I think there are some readers who will find this story fascinating for its imagery and imagination, but I could not appreciate the unremitting grimness.
    • 4/5
      I usually avoid "stream of consciousness" novels, but this one intrigued me since it was from Iceland. And, I was not disappointed. The author makes this style work with his blend of gritty detail and abstract philosophy. There are also sections of dialogue (some imagined) that break up Jonas's monologue.Jonas Palmerson has been convicted of sorcery in 17th century Iceland and banished to an uninhabited island. While he is there, the author takes us inside Jonas's mind -- his thoughts and memories. This paints for the reader a vivid image of life in the 17th century. And, we see the tension between religion and science that continues in some quarters today. The author blends real memories with hallucinations in a way that allow us to learn more about Jonas and his beliefs. Very well done.

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    From the Mouth of the Whale - Sjón

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