The Fish Can Sing


I just read the wonderful book by Halldor Laxness, "The Fish Can Sing", story of the young Alfgrimur and the way he sees and experiences the world he is growing in. To me, an experience of peace, wonderfully corresponding with what I feel myself in the last few months.


"I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams," Laxness said in his 1955 Nobel acceptance speech. "Love of, and respect for, the humble routines of everyday life and its creatures was the only moral commandment which carried conviction when I was a child." As a result, Laxness's depictions of his characters in The Fish Can Sing glow with a careful affection for the commonplace, always lovingly rendered in beautiful prose:

At first she looked at me without seeing me; she was deep in thought, and I imagined that she had got up early to go to the churchyard to mourn a lost friend. She set off in the direction of town. Somehow I got the impression from her walk that she was rather depressed; at least she was taking no particular care over the way she walked, and her hair was dishevelled by a breeze that was not there at all.

from: http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/f/fish-can-sing.shtml

Halldor Laxness

LibraryThing, I really apreciate.

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