Krishna
This is a strange book, in a good way and also in a not so good way. Read on to find out more.
Snow so severe that you can’t even move from one hut to a neighbouring hut for a while. To answer nature’s call, though, you have to trudge through deep snow in the storm to the beach and the rocks and come back.
Barour is the elder boy and his younger brother goes on a trek. In this Scandinavian country it is a precarious existence and they go hiking with a steep mountain on a narrow road with a steep fall on the other side, with just a cable to hold on to. They think that the huge amount of snowfall has eased and so it may be time to go fishing.
This is one of the books that describe faithfully the hardscrabble lives of Icelandic fishermen who live in the cold and frozen place and earn their living through hazardous journeys into the sea to catch fish. Interesting descriptions, very different environments. Brings their lives into focus for a lay, uninformed reader like me.
For instance, even though you are supposed to walk in deep snow to the sea to defecate near it, some people don’t bother and do their business just outside their huts in the snow. It falls to the youngest boy in the community to clean it all up and move it where it should go. Several things about this surprised me;: ‘You should normally do your business on the beach?’ for instance.
It is surprising that reading was totally looked down upon in that community – being ‘useless’ work that does not help a bit in earning their livelihood.
When Barour’s father died when two boats capsized during a hazardous fishing trip all those years ago, it took seven days for the news to reach the village and so, as the author says ‘his dad lived on in their minds for seven days, even though dead in reality’.
Amazing descriptions of the fishing life, with a lot of poignant descriptions thrown in. How they are totally at the mercy of the weather and how cold it is, and how competitive it is to get to the fishing grounds that are farther and farther away each time, and how ‘book reading gets you into trouble’ because it takes away your concentration on survival essentials like taking a jacket on a fishing trip. Absolutely immersive reading on the poor Icelandic fishermen with their hardscrabble life, their superstitions and their outlook and even their (modest) aspirations in life. A very brilliant tale of how a remote community members live their daily life.
Strong, tall, gruff men, going about what is important to them is strangely interesting and illuminating. It is aided by lucid prose and great narration.
You read about their being caught suddenly in a storm on a huge sea in a ‘cockeshell’ of a boat and their decision to just get the fish they have hauled and leave the lines behind for the rest and their struggle with all their energy to just stay alive long enough to reach store in a blinding whiteout snowstorm. And then the tragedy on the boat. The emotional toll it takes on them. It is spellbinding to read and the descriptions are so crisp and full of meaning and emotion that you feel you have hardly read anything that good in recent times. Poetic. Brilliant. The book is readable just for the language and the descriptions, if nothing else.
The boy, grieving, decides to leave the settlement and walk through blinding snow through a murderous terrain and his walk itself, alone and bleak, is vividly narrated.
He finally goes to the Cafe, at the height of exhaustion, with no food in him, and returns the book and promptly faints.
The wife of the owner puts him up in a room in her house cum cafe, and he wakes up there, and is sent to the shop to fetch provisions, and the daughter of the owner seems to stay in his mind – her stone cold eyes on him does not frighten him but enchants him. The irony is that he is still trying to end his life, “tomorrow”, now that he has returned the book, fulfilled his duty but he does not know how to acquire the rope for the deed as he has absolutely no money!
Anyway, the book suddenly ends. It is a small book and we don’t have much resolution on anything. The thing that sustains it though, if you had caught my gist from the beginning, is the poetic language and description, the realistic description of the poor Iceland farming community including layabouts who shirk work no matter the cost and a large caste of characters.
But for these redeeming features, the book is just a book of ordinary life of people.
I am torn between panning this and praising this.
In summary, I think this deserves only a 5/10
— Krishna