This skillfully plotted Icelandic novel portrays the conflicts that first energize and then threaten to destroy a ReykjavÃk family. Architect SigurbÓrn Helgason's visionary dreams of cathedral-building clash both amusingly and painfully with the more mundane yearnings that absorb his wife and three children--and when SigurbÓrn's youngest son is arbitrarily victimized, the once self-assured Helgasons are all afflicted in a way that may remind readers of Joyce Carol Oates's recent novel We Were the Mulvaneys. A fine book (first published in 1992), and a welcome English-language debut by the talented Gunnarsson.