{"id":871,"date":"2016-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T22:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=871"},"modified":"2025-01-01T16:07:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T03:07:02","slug":"moonstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/07\/09\/moonstone\/","title":{"rendered":"Moonstone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sj\u00f3n<\/strong><\/strong>, translated by Victoria Cribb<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sceptre\/Hachette<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, July 9th 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the privileges of moonlighting as a book reviewer is the fact that I sometimes stumble across literary gems that I might otherwise never pick up. Moonstone,<\/em> winner of the 2013 Icelandic Literary Prize, is one such treasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written as a tribute to the author\u2019s uncle B\u00f3si \u00ad \u2013 sailor, alcoholic, booklover, socialist, and gay \u2013 it is not so much a novel as a portrait of a life in miniature that encapsulates a pivotal moment in time for both the story\u2019s protagonist, 16-year-old orphan M\u00e1ni Steinn, and Iceland as a whole. It opens in Reykjav\u00edc the end of 1918, where M\u00e1ni\u2019s life revolves around the cinema, which he attends twice a day (an indulgence he funds by prostituting himself to both townsfolk and tourists alike) and through whose lens he reimagines every aspect of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A natural loner, the boy is content to spend his time alone in the darkness of the town\u2019s theatres and imagining adventures with the daughter of the local broker, S\u00f3la G\u2013, who bears an uncanny resemblance Musidora\u2019s vampiric heroine Irma Vepp. Then reality and imagination collide when the cinemas are closed due to the Spanish Flu, and M\u00e1ni and S\u00f3la G\u2013 travel through the disease-ravaged city searching for survivors and disposing of the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moonstone\u2019s<\/em> author, Sj\u00f3n (the penname of writer, poet and lyricist Sigurj\u00f3n Birgir Sigur\u00f0sson), is one of Iceland\u2019s leading surrealists, and this is clearly evident in the story\u2019s construction. As befits a boy enamoured with the cinema, Mani\u2019s life is presented to us as a series of symbolically layered scenes (and occasional photograph); servicing a client as Mount Katla erupts behind him, being discovered in flagrante<\/em> with a Danish sailor on the day of Iceland\u2019s independence, returning as a black butterfly to visit B\u00f3si\u2019s grandfather at the leprosy hospital where he spent his own earliest years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A degree of reader\u2019s discretion is advised as some scenes, including M\u00e1ni\u2019s fever dreams, and a sexual encounter with which the novel opens, are disturbingly blunt and graphic. Whether this is reflective of the original text or the choices made by its translator, Victoria Cribb, is an interesting question. But for all its unconventionality, Moonstone<\/em> paints a haunting and evocative portrait of a specific time, place and character that should appeal to anybody willing to take a step outside their normal comfort zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/portrait-life-miniature-pivotal-moment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sj\u00f3n
\n
\nOtago Daily Times review July 9th 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[248,370,18,254],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-248","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-sjon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}