Atmospheric, disorienting…A dreamlike meditation on isolation and the bone-aching desire for companionship.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This story is like walking on a tightrope. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking, and it’s a page-turner.” —Authorlink
“Patience will be rewarded…unexpected connections, both literary and emotional.” —Booklist
“Gripping, often surprising…Eiríksdottír’s novel is both intelligent and affecting.” —Publishers Weekly
“Lyrical, wrenching, and arresting as a fist punch to the heart, this award winner from Icelandic author Eiríksdóttir unfolds the growing concern of Elín Jónsdóttir, a seventyish theater props designer, for troubled young playwright Ellen Álfsdóttir. At the same time, the slow revelation of a terrible incident in Elín’s youth explains her insular existence while building with thrillerlike intensity. North-star bright.” —Library Journal
“The rare opportunity to dwell in the mind of a troubled woman…a glimpse of tragedy, trauma, and forsakenness—drawing one closer even as it leaves one a little ill at ease.” —The Straits Times (Singapore)
“A Fist or a Heart is a riveting thriller about the twisty relationship between two women: Elín, a 70-something who lives a lonesome existence and is absorbed by her work making props and prosthetics for adaptations of Nordic crime novels; and Ellen, a young playwright and illegitimate daughter of a famous writer.” —Bustle
“A novel of isolation and secrets, the emotional resonance of A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you as you’re busy trying to figure out what’s lying underneath the solitary lives of these women.” —Three Percent
“Eiríksdóttir offers here a most elegant page-turner, one that disturbs and unsettles, making us question the way trauma casts a spell, the strength of certain secrets, and the innate motivation to find human connection.” —NYLON
“Award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist Kristín Eiríksdóttir has written a clever and many layered story of isolation, art, and memory…A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you.” —Book Riot
09/23/2019
A prop artist’s long-suppressed memories rise to the surface when she encounters a young writer struggling to free herself from a domestic morass in this gripping, often surprising novel, Eiríksdottír’s English-language debut. Elín Jónsdottír is in her 70s and living in Reykjavík; she’s an accomplished maker of props for television shows and films that share “the same old fixation, varying levels of guilt in regard to the abuse of a girl-child.” Elín takes a job making props for a new play by Ellen Álfsdóttir, the 19-year-old daughter of famous writer Álfur Finnsson, because she’s curious about Ellen, whose first play is praised even before it opens. In reality, Ellen is a troubled, lonely misfit who was raised by her increasingly delusional mother after Finnsson died from drinking. Yet the solitary, bristly Elín is drawn to Ellen, perhaps because her story reminds Elín of her own fatherless childhood, and of a dark episode that shaped her entire life. Moving between Elín’s recollections of studying art in the 1960s and traveling abroad in the ’80s, and Ellen’s present-day meetings with boys she meets online, the book offers readers insight into the draws and dangers of solitude; thinking of a John Waters film, Elín reflects that “someone else’s fingerprints constrict your existence. There’s nothing particularly charitable or charming about it, but it’s human.” Eiríksdottír’s novel is both intelligent and affecting. (Sept.)
2019-07-06
In award-winning Icelandic novelist Eiríksdóttir's English-language debut, an older woman fixates on a young playwriting prodigy, and both women come to the realization that they are linked by shared trauma in their pasts.
Elín Jónsdóttir is a woman in her late 60s living alone in Reykjavík. She makes her living creating props—severed limbs and decaying corpses, especially—for the theater and Nordic crime films. Elín crosses paths with Ellen Álfsdóttir, the 19-year-old daughter of famed playwright Alfur Finnsson and author of a new play that's garnering a lot of buzz. This atmospheric, disorienting tale is narrated by Elín, who says "the reason I decided to write this is that if I don't, no one will," and that it's "an attempt to connect signs that were conveyed in waking life and in dreams." Elín, who had a difficult childhood, has spent her adulthood pushing others away. She claims that she "[can] see feigð, someone's death approaching." Long ago, she "accidentally got mixed up in the most salacious story of them all": one involving Ellen's philandering father, who was discovered dead halfway between his wife's house and that of his mistress—Ellen's mother. Elín's work in the theater brings her close to Ellen, and she spies on the young woman and her artist mother. "The people I wanted to get to know were far beyond my reach," Elín confesses, and the unexpected delivery of boxes full of memorabilia from her dead grandmother's house forces her to recall that she has obsessed over others before with traumatic and tragic results. As Ellen's play is produced and Elín circles closer to the girl, she finally acknowledges the spell she's under and that "trauma is, of course, nothing but an enchantment."
A dreamlike meditation on isolation and the bone-aching desire for companionship.