The Creator

by Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir

Sveinn is a reclusive, middle-aged bachelor who devotes his life to creating and selling beautiful custom-made sex dolls. Loa is a divorced mother of two, whose eldest daughter's increasing isolation is giving her real cause for concern. Their lives collide on the evening when Loa's car breaks down outside Sveinn's house.

Funny, touching and never far from tragedy, The Creator is an affectingly original story of an unlikely friendship and an unlikely cure for the problem of never quite feeling real.

Genres: Fiction

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Guðrún Eva's first book, Sóley sólufegri, came out in 1998 in a very limited edition. In the same year the publishing house Bjartur published her short story collection Á meðan hann horfir á þig ertu María mey (While He Watches You, You are the Virgin Mary), to much acclaim. Since then Guðrún Eva has published five novels, a collection of philosophical stories for children published by The National Centre for Educational Materials and a book of poetry. She has also translated novels by foreign authors.

Reviews

[Ruby Tombstone Lives! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book is exactly like watching one of those sweet, stylish Scandinavian films that pop up at film festivals, where nothing really happens, and there are no big revelations, but it's all. just. so. QUIRKY. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of quirky. I just think there could have been more.

The two central characters are both great, multi-layered and flawed:
Sveinn: a forty-something "grumpy old man" who makes beautifully life-like sex dolls, and who doesn't so much hate women, as fear that they look down upon him, as he looks down on his clients.
Lóa: a woman struggling with her acutely anorexic teenage daughter, her "forgotten" younger daughter, a growing dependence on alcohol, and a sense of guilt that she's not being the best mother she could possibly be.
There's also a rich cast of other quirky (there's that word again) characters to fill out the landscape.

There's a fairly decent premise: Man makes sex doll, strange woman steals sex doll. Man's life is threatened by an anonymous stalker. Woman's teenage daughter goes missing. Two lonely, isolated people find each other and help each other to survive very hard times, despite not actually liking each other.
Human kindness transcends the ugliness of life. Salvation ensues. There's even a very well executed device of alternating points of view between the man and the woman, subtly demonstrating that there are two different realities in play, the "truth" presumably lying somewhere in between. Miscommunications inevitably lead to dire misunderstandings, which are both tragic and comical in places.

So what's missing? I just don't know. All the ingredients are there. The writing is excellent: Nothing too flashy, but Minervudóttir can clearly write. Perhaps it's the way the plot fizzled toward the end? The lack of real surprises, despite having put everything in place to accommodate a giant plot twist, had she wanted to go that way? Perhaps it's all just a little too.....nice? I'm not sure. At the end of the day, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a festival film that was atmospheric & quirky, but ultimately had very little to say.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Creator is an Icelandic novel about a man who makes sex dolls and a woman whose daughter is suffering from mental ill health. It explores some interesting themes in a way that feels... incomplete.

This wasn't a bad book, but I felt detached from the characters and their emotional struggles. I didn't really feel any kinship with them. They didn't behave in ways I recognised and it was hard to picture them. This is probably why I found it a slog to get through.

Good premise, original ideas, but it didn't quite click for me, I'm afraid.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dang, now this is the Icelandic book I was waiting for. And I chose it by walking into a lovely bookstore in Reykjavik, seeing it laid out on the very first display table, digging the cover, digging the synopsis about a man who makes sex dolls and a female stranger who stops by his place and spontaneously steals one of the dolls. Adorable, don't you think? I bought the book, brought it home and read it right away. I never do this thing where I buy a book that I've never heard of before and read it pretty much immediately. Fairy tale ending.

Going by the that brief summary you can tell this is not your every day story with your average Joe meets Sue but it also is not as quirky and out there as it could have been. A few moments aside this is a very grounded story with a slightly unusual start off point, and it worked to enchant me with its mix of simplicity with a little extra. At its core it is a novel about loneliness and detachment, and what better to symbolize that and the yearning for something more than a sex doll.
We follow Sveinn, the creator of the dolls, who is so easy to picture in his middle aged grumpiness, wearing Icelandic sweaters and not a fan of too long conversations. Then there is Lóa, a mother struggling with the care of her mentally sick daughter, her car breaks down outside Sveinn's house and in the end she steals a doll. Read yourself to find out why. But also read this for wonderfully realized characters that fit perfectly into the landscape of Iceland being a bit scruffy and harsh but so worth it underneath.

The novel is told from those 2 perspectives, we switch each chapter and with that often cover the same ground again but with a different POV now, something I personally quite love but others might find a bit repetitive. This is a very quiet, introspected novel where you spend a lot of time inside someone's thoughts, they might act a certain way or say one thing out loud, then their inner lives reveal a different side to that. Same goes for the perspective shift: while there aren't always dramatic plot happenings I found it so interesting to see how the often same event or exchange reverberated on the other side. We have a couple of scenes where the characters were maybe a bit over the top, or a bit dramatic with a few more obscure reactions but to me this actually fits into this Icelandic world, there is a feel of ice and fire to the characters.
The one thing that bothered is that a big driving point is miscommunication: Sveinn has a certain assumptions that could have been cleared up so much quicker if he had talked about it more clearly. Since it pushes big chunks of his motivation and with that the plot it was frustrating to me. While I'm also not quite sure how I feel about the ending, if it was quite enough for me, I do believe this is a hidden gem of translated fiction, or more so of simply contemporary fiction.

UPDATE: I'm giving this 5*. You know how I can tell this is a new favorite for me? Because I'm not sure I can recommend it to anyone, I actually think a lot of people will not like it the way I did yet for me with all its flaws it just worked its way into my soul. It's not for everybody but it is for me and that's what makes a 5* (there are exceptions but I am often more likely to recommend my 4* books). On this account we don't do objective 5*, we do the ones that burrow deep and are personal. This book is my Ljubljana.

[Sanja_Sanjalica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a weird book, but the characters and minute things of life make it so captivating and calming and wonderfully weirdly relatable. Also, two perspectives given on the same events really show it's a wonder that we people manage to communicate and understand each other at all. A layered and a simple book all at once.

[Sara Hlín · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skrifuð af þessum frábæra höfundi á meðan hún dvaldi í Hólminum. Mjög vel skrifuð og skemmtileg. Svolítið ótrúverðug á köflum og það pirraði mig aðeins. Kannski á ég bara svona venjulegt líf? Sagar en öðruvísi og hugmyndin góð. Fær mig til að vilja lesa allar bækurnar hennar.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever found a book so unremittingly bland. From a relatively interesting premise, nothing happens. Characters who need a damn good slap never get one. The interaction between the two main characters is tedious and unrealistic. Alternating chapters between those two characters create unnecessary repetition - as if the writer has deliberately set out to bore the reader and unsure of doing so has tried extra hard by doing it twice. The plot moves like a dancing glacier - one step inexorably forwards, two steps inexorably back.

Now, I'm all for ennui and existential angst, but "The Creator" has nothing to say - not "nothing new", but "nothing" - in this regard. The writing itself is flaccid and reactive. Whether this is a failure of translation or the original work itself I don't know, but it's hard to imagine that it is intentional. Ultimately, the novel is unbelievable in the worse sense of the word. One to avoid.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird and quirky and totally Icelandic. This is a super low-key book but there was just something about it that I really enjoyed.

[Aaron (Typographical Era) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the opening moments of The Creator a divorced mother of two named Lóa steers her car towards what she believes to be a service garage after it suffers a flat tire. Much to her dismay however, she quickly discovers that the location has changed hands. When a solitary man named Sveinn emerges from the building and offers her his assistance their chance meeting sets in motion a chain of events that neither could have ever hoped to foresee.

Sveinn manufactures sex dolls for a living. Not the plastic blow-up kind, but heavy, expensive, life-sized pieces of art that are hand crafted from silicone. If fact, the first thing he notices about Lóa’s appearance is that with the exception of her hair, she has almost nothing in common with the faux girls that he creates. Sveinn muses that she “resembled typical drawings of the first women settlers: large, round eyes, and big, shapely bosoms that rested firmly, on a sturdy, solid torso, and legs like two magnificent pillars.” He invites her in for wine and dinner while he fixes her tire, and after returning to discover her passed out in a chair, leaves her to sleep away her exhaustion.

READ MORE:
http://www.typographicalera.com/creat...

[Harriet · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The previous evening, just before she had nodded off in the armchair, Sveinn had told her he made dolls, but she hadn't exactly been paying attention and maybe she had imagined something romantic: puppets with extraordinary nobility in the lines of their carved faces, or pale china dolls in creamy white silk dresses. It was hardly possible to dream up something more unromantic than this."

I don't think I have ever come across such a strange book. When I had read the back cover in Waterstones I was unsure of what to expect, even more so when the assistant expressed her approval of my choice.

This book raises some important questions about mental health, sexual identity, old age, death and love. And answers most by demonstrating how coincidental life can often be.

The Creator is brilliantly written. It was so interesting to read how differently a certain scenario can be experienced by others.

I will certainly remember this book for a long time.

[Nicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing idea for a book - doesn't quite rise to level I expected, but is beautifully written. I kind of disliked Loa, too, which wasn't great when she's one of two main characters. Sevinn, however, is a good character and I liked reading about him.
This is the first Icelandic novel I have ever read. It's quite subtle (quite an achievement when Sevinn's profession is making sex dolls!). It's very slow moving and it feels like not a lot happens, though actually it's quite eventful. Ending is very open to interpretation.

[Cenhner Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una mujer soltera, madre de dos hijas, la mayor con una depresión marca Acme.
Un hombre soltero, que hace muñecas sexuales y el único contacto que tiene con gente es con sus clientes.

La casualidad hace que a ella se le pinche la rueda del auto frente a la casa de él; él la hace entrar hasta que termine de comer. Ella se poné en un pedo atroz y se queda dormida; él aprovecha para cambiarle la rueda del auto y después se va a dormir. Ella se despierta, lo ve dormido, chusmear la casa y decide robarse una muñeca porque capaz que le sirve a la hija para curarse. Sí, ella está loca como una cabra.

Lo que pasa con el libro es que la historia es muy grande (la mina inestable y perdida, el tipo ermitaño y antisocial, la hija suicida, los clientes del tipo que son tan frikis que te la pasás el libro entero pensando "ahora entra uno de los clientes y los cagan a tiros a todos"). Y aunque la historia es tan grande y compleja, todo está enfocado en cosas chiquitas. La historia grande transcurre, pero el foco está puesto en cosas pequeñas. Es muy curioso, y está bien contando; cada capítulo está contado desde la perspectiva de alguno de los dos, entonces leer lo mismo dos veces pero desde una óptica distinta ayuda a reforzar esto de correr el foco de la foto grande.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uno fra i libri più strani letti finora
È la prima volta che leggo di un'autrice islandese, ma ho come il sospetto che le storie nordiche siano caratterizzate da questo aspetto ovattato e di inquietudine particolare, come neve che si posa soffice e leggera, ma che diventa sempre più pesante, strato dopo strato. È difficile valutare un libro la cui storia ti lascia una sensazione strana, oltre che di non conclusione, di solitudine, di disagio, ma che dall'altra parte è scritto molto bene, con la delicatezza di chi conosce certi problemi sociali, e vi si abbandona dentro inerme, e l'aggressività che scaturisce rispetto a determinati canoni della società. Si evince che l'autrice sa di cosa parli, probabilmente ha avuto contatti diretti con problemi psichici, anoressia e disagi sociali, forse lei stessa, perché infatti nelle descrizioni traspare una purezza che solo chi ha vissuto determinate situazioni si troverebbe a dire: "Non avrei saputo dirlo meglio". Di questo libro ho apprezzato la scrittura, è una storia che si legge bene, scorre e non annoia, ma ti lascia innegabilmente con un po' di disagio diffuso.

[Ape · Rating 3 out of 5]

Curious book and I can't make up my mind about it. It is wonderfully written in that way that sucks you in and keeps you reading because you just have to know. And yes, it did have a happy, or perhaps I should say hopeful end, but a lot of the subjects in this story are so desolate that I do feel a bit... low. There is loneliness, isolation and how it may drive you mad, anorexia, and the sheer terror of loosing a child and there being nothing you can do about it. And this may make it sound overly dramatic, but it is all depicted in the quiet everyday of life, which makes it more scary I think.

It starts in an odd way. A woman gets a flat tyre and can't undo the nuts. A man comes out to help. She waits in his house, finds he makes hyper realistic see dolls. So she steals one and drives off whilst he is sleeping. Does this sound a bit mad, like nothing to do with what I have just described? It is all the same book, set up in windy, windy Iceland. Oh how I remember the wind of Reykjavik.

[Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this in English translation in a bookstore in Reyjavik while on a short trip to Iceland. The premise sounded quirky and fun - a guy who crafts high-end artistic sex dolls for a living encounters a stressed-out single mom, and the mom ends up disappearing mysteriously with one of his dolls. I liked having a window into life in Iceland by reading the story, but the book wasn't as good as I was hoping. The plot got a little repetitive with the same misunderstandings between the man and woman recurring again and again, and the pacing was sort of off, because I felt impatient for them to actually communicate already and stop always thinking the exact wrong thing about each other. So, even though it's a short novel, it took me a long time to read because I never got very hooked into the story. However, the relationship between the mom and her anorexic daughter was really memorable and moving, and I think will stay with me a long time.

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Luin tätä kirjaa melkein vuoden ajan, mikä vaikutti lukukokemukseen. Välissä oli myös useita taukoja, jotka saattoivat pahimmillaan kestää kuukausia. Suurin osa kirjan tapahtumista ei siis ole kovin hyvin muistissa, koska luin viimeiset parikymmentä sivua vuoden 2026 puolella pitkän tauon jälkeen.

Olen lukenut pari islantilaista kirjaa ja ne kaikki ovat olleet jollain tavalla outoja. Tämä ei ollut poikkeus. Toki jo kirjan kuvaus antoi osviittaa siitä, että erikoisempi lukukokemus on tiedossa. Kirjan kieli oli helppolukuista ja tarina eteni hyvää vauhtia eteenpäin. En kuitenkaan pitänyt siitä kuinka dialogia ei ollut erikseen eroteltu muusta tekstistä.

Loppujen lopuksi tämä taisi olla lukemistani islantilaiskirjoista vähiten outo. Lukisin kirjailijalta mielellään jotain muutakin, mutta tämä taitaa olla hänen ainoa suomennettu teoksensa.

3,25 tähteä.

[Roberta Carambia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bella la costruzione del libro che dà modo di poter andare a fondo nelle reazioni ed emozioni dei due protagonisti. Rende chiaro come un'analoga situazione o uno stesso dialogo possa essere percepito in maniera differente da chi ne fa parte, soprattutto se carico di pregiudizi e non detti.
È il secondo libro che leggo di quest'autrice e devo dire che la sua scrittura mi piace molto, riesce a tenerti incollato alla storia, particolare e ricercata. Il finale però, a mio parere, è arrivato un po' troppo presto, mi aspettavo che le ultime parti fossero più elaborate, che la storia esaurisse la curiosità instillata nel lettore e che fosse ripagato dalla suspense creata dall'autrice.

[Theresa Gräfe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein eher ungewöhnliches Buch und ich kann mich noch nicht entscheiden, ob ungewöhnlich gut oder ungewöhnlich verstörend. Die Protagonisten haben mir gefallen, auch wenn sie mir an der ein oder anderen Stelle etwas überzogen erschienen. Die Story ist ein klassisches Hin und Her aus Missverständnissen aber doch recht durchschaubar. Gar nicht abgeholt hat mich das Ende. Wo kommt auf einmal diese Figur Marta her? Und warum sitzen am Ende alle am Strand? Das ging mir deutlich zu schnell . Deswegen 3 Sterne.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read somewhat different to what the cover might suggest. As with many of the authors from the North, Mínervudóttir exhibits her own distinct style of writing which I find, apart from being a breath of fresh air, enables the reader to engage deeply and identify familiar situations and emotions in a somewhat unusual context. Let us hope many more of her books are translated into English.

[Guðmundur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mjög vel skrifuð og svolítið skrítin bók sem að hélt manni þó vel við efnið.

Bjóst alltaf við við einverju ógurlega fyrirsjáanlegu "plot twist" sem að svo aldrei kom. Þannig séð kom endirinn manni á óvart.

Hefði viljað hafa samt aðeins bitastæðari endi.

[Mckynzie King · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a little confused why the sex doll was part of the story? I get the metaphor towards the end about the emptiness of womanhood and the comparison to longing for oblivion. I feel like it wasn’t constructed very throughly.

[Ash Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing was nice but it was intensely boring

[Tenli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another terrific discovery (for me) in the Icelandic fiction category. I hope more of this author's work is translated into English.

[Katla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frekar leiðinlegt bók, mæli ekki með

[Mariangela · Rating 3 out of 5]

It captivates you with the description of the characters and how they become intertwined- however it becomes very flat and at the end it just falls completely flat..
Being so familiar with Iceland I wanted to read a contemporary fiction set in this amazing land- where the weather and the darkness really take over - the mindset of the people is always fascinating to me as it is definitely shaped by the weather- darkness or abundance of light and it's "isolation" being an island far north in the middle of nowhere...
I related and understood the characters and their issues but the story could have been furthered developed and could have ended with a punch-

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept, but I found the execution quite sloppy.

This might be due to the translation, but I'm inclined to think not, as in addition to some rather clunky description and dialogue the overlapping dual perspectives created a very awkward and repetitive structure. Ultimately, the book felt like it was amping up to a final act that never happened and the ending left me swinging in the breeze.

Some promising stuff, but buried under quite a lot of snow. Shame.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generous three because the work starts to deal with deeper matters and the idea that change can be both drastic and hard to enact.

I liked that neither narrator was omniscient and that both of their minds were clouded by their pasts and socialization. Sometimes this ventured into stereotypes, but generally it was well done.

[Mintti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suomeksi: Nukentekijä, islantilaiset on ihanasti erilaisia ainakin musiikissa ja kirjoissa, tämäkään tekele ei tuottanut pettymystä. Erikoisia ihmisiä ja sattumusten kautta yhteen nivoutuvia tarinoita jotka eivät ehkä olekaan sitä mitä luullaan.

[Etta Searle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprised to see so many bad reviews. I liked how weird this book was. Great character relationships. Pulled me in really quickly, and I wanted to know what was going to happen to everyone. Definitely want to read more Scandinavian stuff after this and a few others I got at a book fair.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

The characters were all flawed and interesting. It's told from the perspective of the two main characters in third person, so we can see each's view of the same situation. It was interesting to see how the dialogue changed depending on whose perspective we were reading from.

[Jon S. Prue · Rating 5 out of 5]

What this book accomplishes is an examination of both female AND male sexuality. Point of narration shifts between Sveinn to Loa, with some middle chapters where the two interact blurring the order. Please do not discredit this book because of a surface reading of Sveinn's profession.