And the wind sees all by Guðmundur Andri Thorsson
Icelandic fiction
Original title – Valeyrarvalsinn
Translators – Bjorg Arnadottir and Andrew Cauthery
Source – personal copy
We were discussing on Twitter the other night that it has been ten years of Peirene Press and there would be thirty books and I went back and I have missed a number of them over the last few years so I decided to order three I hadn’t read and this was the first to arrive. Guðmundur Andri Thorsson has written ten books including four novels and this was the first to be translated to English. It was up for the Nordic lit prize but lost out to Kim Leine book which I reviewed a while ago here . The books original title means The Waltz of Valeyri the small village the book is set. Knowing this I was reminded of the dance to the music of time the Powell sequence of novels that took its title from a painting by Poussin that features time and people dancing around it well this is a village dancing around time.
The old couple sit at the kitchen table munching custard creams. Skipper Cudjon is thinking about the great northern diver he was in the valley at Lake Valeyri yesterday evening, about its majestic glide along the lake and its long dive for fish, as if careless of time, as if free. Sveinsina is somewhere in the middle of Briggi’s guitar solo at that gig on Austurbaejarbio, the solo which, later that night, he said had been for her alone
The Captain remembers the diver he saw but also another event
This takes place in just two mins and captures the thoughts and stories of a small Icelandic fishing village that has at its heart that the beautiful choirmistress of choir Kata she is cycling through the town in her new blue polka dot dress in the last practice before the tonight’s highly anticipated show. What follows is a series of Vignettes as each character sees Kata on that bicycle and we get glimpses into their lives A priest with money troubles from Gambling online and has lost touch with those around him. The brother and sister that don’t speak he is wandering trying to remember what caused the break up between them as he does. A sea captain remembers a great Northern diver that he saw on the water such a graceful bird leads him to a sad event in his life. The Choirmistress own past is clouded and she is an incomer but her past isn’t fully known. An idealistic poet that has set his bar and ideals to high. The little touches get you the music folks are listening to by the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, he Finnish composer Avro Part and Dixieland music
He lifts his pen expectantly, takes a sip of cold coffee, puts his mug back down and looks up, stroking his beard, From the window he sees Kata choir gliding past on her bike, her forehead rinkled in concentration, wearing a white dress with blue polka dots. He smiles and scribbles something in the notebook lying next to the white sheet of papoer. He writes “sea”, “shore”,”grass”
The poem has fluttered away into tomorrow
I loved this line about the poem fluttering away
Joyce first tried a day in Ulysses and an hour in Finnigans wake. But here we have just two mins and a sort of Camera Obscura that has come to life as we see the bike go through the heart of the town we see all Human nature from Loss, envy, gambling, despair this is village warts and all. Of course, many villages have been written about from the classic Sherwood Ohio which uses the same vignette style of writing through Thomas Under milkwood this isn’t as dark as that book for me but the feeling is the same it seems to capture a world in Amber just that two mins and what everyone is thinking fro the present to the past the loss of sons, falling outs and falling into gambling addiction. The future Kata and her choir’s forthcoming performance that is most eagerly wondered about. If you ever wished the google street view would come to life this is it we capture the spirit of a village through those that live there and it shows that there is a story in everyone background. I so pleased we discussed the amount we had read it gave me a chance to find this gem of a book. Have you read it ?
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