Uproarious, sharp, and outrageously funny joyride with plenty of octane, though it doesn’t really go anywhere in the end.
An award-winning Icelandic novelist makes his English-language debut with a kind of Arctic Bright Lights, Big City, following the nocturnal misadventures of an overgrown baby who refuses to grow up.
As depicted here, the better part of Iceland’s populace are either writers or drunks. Our antihero Hlynur Bjorn drinks a fair amount every night himself and is always working Shakespearean quotes into his conversation. Thirty-three-year-old Hlynur still lives with his mother and is happily unemployed. He usually gets up shortly before Mom comes home from work, browses the bookstores, and spends the evenings in Reykjavik nightclubs with his pals Throstur and Guildy. Most nights Hlynur finds someone to have sex with, but he doesn’t have a steady girlfriend and is in no rush to find one. Iceland is a pretty broadminded place, sexually speaking (when Hlynur’s lesbian mother came out of the closet all he had to say was “cool”), so it’s easy not to commit. But several unexpected events complicate this happy routine. First, Hlynur falls for Mom’s girlfriend Lolla. Second, a woman Hlynur slept with a couple of times turns up pregnant with his child and decides to have the baby. Third, Guildy is diagnosed with AIDS. And fourth (this is a little while later), Lolla turns out to be pregnant by Hlynur as well. There are a lot of additional minor crises (e.g., Hlynur’s drunkard father falls off the wagon), but they go by the wayside once everyone starts getting pregnant. Hlynur tries his best to keep to his schedule of books, booze, porn, and sex, but suddenly he finds himself faced with emotional crises of a magnitude for which he is wholly unprepared. Is he actually going to get serious and decide what he wants from life? We all have to, sooner or later—even in Iceland.
Uproarious, sharp, and outrageously funny joyride with plenty of octane, though it doesn’t really go anywhere in the end.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-2514-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
