The narrator, Domhildur, or Dyja, as her great aunt calls her, tells us of her everyday life as a midwife living in an old fashioned apartment left to her by her aunt and when she isn’t midwifing she tells us of the expansive philosophies that she discovers within the papers of her late aunt. So if you spotted the word midwife and started having cosy thoughts about Call the Midwife you might want to think again although Raymond Nonnatus is mentioned in the narrative which somehow made me chuckle.
This is what I like to call a cerebral book. It’s not full of action and twists. It’s hard to pin down in a lot of ways which endears it to me as I enjoy genre defiant books. It’s the kind of book that has you thinking long after you’ve put it to one side - some contemporary environmental thoughts that seem ahead of great aunt’s time and some almost Zen like philosophies regarding the light and the dark of life, and the world.
The sagacity of Dyja’s aunt could even form a separate book of worthy aphorisms.
‘ Instead of being humble towards the other living creatures he shares the earth with and its plants, man wants to have everything for himself. He wants to own the fish in the sea, icebergs and freshwater rivers, he wants to own waterfalls, he wants to own islands, he would even like to own the sunset if he could. Possessions make man forget that he dies. When a person finally understand what matters, he has often started to ail and hasn’t long to go.‘
Wow, powerful words with a lot of truth in them. But if that sounds heavy, and it is potent, fear not, for the narrative is balanced with some lighter moments especially the exchanges with Dyja and her sister. It’s not a character driven narrative but there are a few other characters who play an important part. One is the electrician who offers a parallel with himself and Dyja as he is one of four electricians in his family and she is one of four midwives in her family. Unwittingly he furthers the great light/dark contemplation.
‘You could say we work in the same sector then since you’re a mother of light, both of us work in light.’
He then goes on to say, ‘ In fact I’ve always been scared of the dark.‘
The novel is set around Christmas time which seemed to be salient, fuelling more thoughts about life. and that seems to be what the book does. There isn’t really a plot are such unless we consider Domhildur’s progression as she starts to redesign her apartment but I also saw that as her emerging from her own darkness into a new light. It’s not a long book either. it’s well written, very poetic in places and the translator, Brian Fitzgibbon, has done a brilliant job.
But perhaps I’ll let great-aunt have the last word.
‘It is said that humans never recover from being born, that the most challenging experience in life is coming into the world and at the most difficult thing is to get used to the light.‘
My thanks to Pushkin Press for a gifted copy of the book and a place upon the blog tour. Please do check out what other bloggers have to say about the book.
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir is a prize-winning novelist, playwright and poet. Her novels have been translated into 33 languages, and have won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the Icelandic Literary Prize, the Prix Medicis Etranger and the Icelandic Booksellers Prize. She lives in Reykjavík.
Brian Fitzgibbon translates from Italian, French and Icelandic. Recent translations include Woman at 1000 Degrees by Halgrimur Helgason as well as Hotel Silence and Miss Iceland by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir.
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