3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Icelander who went up a glacier and came down with ghosts, July 30 2005
This review is from: Under the Glacier (Paperback)
In her introduction, Susan Sontag described Under the Glacier as being a sci fi, comic, dream and philisophical novel. That may be, but to me it was something more like a long ghost story told not around the campfire but in a report. The narrator is sent to a small town on the western edge of Iceland to investigate weird goings-on in the local church. He meets people, interviewing some and just recording the conversations of others. He tries to follow what is happenning around him, sometimes getting it, and sometimes not (which means, as readers of his report, we at times don't know what is happening either). Some parts of the book are very funny, others quite thought-provoking. Although a much easier read, it reminded me of Gass's Omensetter's Luck. My biggest complaint is that at times the translation reads rather opaquely. Laxness chose words and phrases and situations that are obviously important in Icelandic culture. Some explanatory notes at the back of the book (as there are in the Inspector Montalbano mysteries) would help readers who first come into contact with Iceland through this novel.
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