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    Miss Iceland: A Novel
    Miss Iceland: A Novel
    Miss Iceland: A Novel
    Ebook216 pages

    Miss Iceland: A Novel

    By Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “Will appeal to readers of Elena Ferrante and Margaret Atwood . . . the unusual setting offers an interesting twist on the portrait of an artist as a young woman.” —Bookpage

    In 1960s Iceland, Hekla dreams of being a writer. In a nation of poets, where each household proudly displays leatherbound volumes of the Sagas, and there are more writers per capita than anywhere else in the world, there is only one problem: she is a woman.

    After packing her few belongings, including James Joyces’s Ulysses and a Remington typewriter, Hekla heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. She moves in with her friend Jon, a gay man who longs to work in the theatre, but can only find dangerous, backbreaking work on fishing trawlers. Hekla’s opportunities are equally limited: marriage and babies, or her job as a waitress, in which harassment from customers is part of the daily grind. The two friends feel completely out of place in a small and conservative world.

    And yet that world is changing: JFK is shot. Hemlines are rising. In Iceland, another volcano erupts and Hekla meets a poet who brings to light harsh realities about her art—as she realizes she must escape to find freedom abroad, whatever the cost.

    Miss Iceland, a winner of two international book awards, comes from the acclaimed author of Hotel Silence, which received the Icelandic Literary Prize.

    “Only a great book can make you feel you’re really there, a thousand miles and a generation away. I loved it.” —Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon

    “[A] winning tale of friendship and self-fulfillment.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 16, 2020
    ISBN9780802149244
    Miss Iceland: A Novel
    Author

    Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

    Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir is a prize-winning novelist, playwright and poet. She also writes lyrics for the Icelandic performance pop band Milkywhale. Auður Ava's novels have been translated into over 25 languages, and they include Butterflies in November and Hotel Silence, also published by Pushkin Press. Hotel Silence won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the Icelandic Literary Prize, and was chosen Best Icelandic Novel in 2016 by booksellers in Iceland. Auður Ava lives in Reykjavik.

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    Reviews for Miss Iceland

    4/5

    56 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A lovely book about a young woman who wants to find her own way in the world as a writer at a time when women are held back by societal expectations. This is one of those books that doesn't really have much of a plot but does a great job of getting inside the characters and creating an atmosphere, thus allowing the reader to "try on" the characters' lives. I really enjoyed it and would read more from this author.
    • 5/5
      I read this book for the #ReadTheWorld21 challenge on Instagram. I knew nothing about it, I picked it up at the bookstore just for this challenge, and I LOVED IT. Set in Iceland in the 60s, the main character is a writer and her best friend is a gay man. They are both so hemmed in by other people's limitations and demands. But their friendship keeps them afloat and gives them space to be themselves. Melancholy and lovely.
    • 5/5
      The Publisher Says: Iceland in the 1960s. Hekla is a budding female novelist who was born in the remote district of Dalir. After packing her few belongings, including James Joyces's Ulysses and a Remington typewriter, she heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. There, she intends to become a writer. Sharing an apartment with her childhood and queer friend Jón John, Hekla comes to learn that she will have to stand alone in a small male dominated community that would rather see her win a pageant than be a professional artist. As the two friends find themselves increasingly on the outside, their bond shapes and strengthens them artistically in the most moving of ways.I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.My Review: It's always been true that, to be a success, a woman must do twice as much and can expect half the reward a man would get for the same labor. Hekla, cursed with both attractiveness and intelligence in a smugly patriarchal culture, learns that to be a writer who is taken seriously while also being a pretty female is a Sisyphean task. The 1960s were not yet times of change in Iceland....Hekla's ambitions lure her away from her rural home and, when she arrives in Reykjavík, her efforts are...Herculean. Yes, lots of mythology referred to here, and honestly it's only down to the fact that there isn't a better metaphor for what she is required to expend. Jón John, her gay BFF, preceded her to Reykjavík because if there's a worse thing to be in rural Iceland than a smart, ambitious, pretty woman, it's a queer man. They take up residence together while he does the kind of labor he can find, gets laid when someone's horny and their wife isn't willing, and ponders with her why they should be reduced to such crummy exigencies for getting mere crumbs of what they really want.I was ready to give the book five stars until I got to the ending. What happened there, I fear, was me smacking my nose on the sad, true realization that Jón John's deeply ingrained homophobia will, in fact, be the death of him; and that Hekla, in accepting a very terrible and unfair life for herself, has resigned herself to the way the world is. Is this how the book should end? Yes, I can certainly see that it would make the most sense for it to end as it has. I still wanted, on an emotional level, to feel the striving I'd seen the characters enact pay off. I expected Surtsey to come roaring up faster than it did and give the characters new, hot, fire-powered land to live their new, hot, fire-powered lives on.“Men are born poets. By the time of their confirmation, they’ve taken on the inescapable role of being geniuses. It doesn’t matter whether they write books or not. Women, on the other hand, grapple with puberty and have babies, which prevents them from being able to write.”No, not for humans as fully, honestly drawn as these humans were, to be given a fairy-tale ending. They got reality. It felt like a cheat; it wasn't, of course, but it felt like one. I will say that the emotional core of the book is sadness and that was not the source of my half-star docking. It was the changes Jón John and Hekla made not amounting to an improvement of their lives. It could have; it seemed to me that, once the Faustian bargain of marriage was struck between them, they could've used that energy to propel themselves to happier endings. But the core of sadness was too powerful. The end of the story is, in this book, really and truly an end. Hekla's book being published? A major achievement! And it's all her ex-boyfriend Starkadur's because otherwise, without his man's name on it, the book won't *get* published. Miss Iceland was beautifully, poignantly sad all the way through. But when a story has one note, it's hard to maintain one's taste for that, and only that, note.The skylight has misted up in the night, a white patina of snow has formed on the windowsill. I drape {Starkadur}'s sweater over me, move into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe it up. A trail of sleet streams down the glass, I traced it with my finger. Apart from the squawk of seagulls, a desolate stillness reigns over Skolavordustigur.Understand your journey, don't undertake it if you're not in the mood for exactly that journey. If you are, this will repay your attention with exquisitely lovely, painfully honest images and you'll be honestly unable to see for sad tears that won't quite fall.
    • 4/5
      A quiet novel set before the age of the Internet which highlights Iceland's isolation. Both Hekla and John Jon struggle to live the lives they imagine for themselves within their native culture. The author brought this conflict to life. I found the ending odd and abrupt.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this novel, partly because I once spent a July 4th weekend in Reykjavík. I related to the protagonist, Hekla (reminded me of the creative output I had in my twenties), her friend Jón John (with him being an outsider), and her poet boyfriend Starkadur (his trouble writing, which is how I am now). I didn't get the ending, but I enjoyed the characters and what life was like in 1960s Iceland. Looking forward to reading another one of Ólafsdóttir's books, HOTEL SILENCE.
    • 5/5
      It's 1963, and Hekla, who was named after a volcano, moves from the countryside to Reykjavik. In a country full of male poets, her only desire is to become a novelist. To survive she gets a job as a waitress, where sexual harrassement from the customers is part of every day. Hekla has two friends from home who also live in the city. Jon John is gay and wants to design costumes for the theatre, but can only find dangerous work on fishing boats where he is harrassed by his coworkers. There is also Lydur, who is 22, pregnant with her second child, and living in a basement apartment with her barely literate husband. She also wants to write, but struggles to fit it in after caring for her family. Hekla gets a boyfriend--a poet who struggles to write but can never think of anything to say, and at first she hides her more successful wriitng from him. These three characters are made miserable by the mid-20th century hetero-normative and conservative expectations of Icelandic society. Finally, Jon John and Hekla escape to mainland Europe, but life is a struggle there too. Rating: Miss Iceland took me a little while to get into, mostly because I didn't know what to expect. It's told in short vignettes. By 3/4 of the way I was absolutely loving the writing and the story. The ending was a bit too abrupt and went in an unexpected direction. 4.5 stars Recommended for: people who want to read Icelandic fiction that isn't about crime and murders
    • 5/5
      What a great little gem of a book. Transated from Icelandic--the book reminded me of an Anne Tyler book. Character forward and the plot just rolls out without you even being aware of it. I loved Hekla, the protaganist. She wasn't afraid to live her life and pursue her dreams. I also liked how she handled men--they expected her to be traditional and she just wasn't but yet she never gave them any reason for them to expect her to be.

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    Miss Iceland - Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

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