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Kompa
Fræðimaður, ung kona, verður fyrir smávægilegri truflun inni á handritasafni við rannsókn á 365 ára gamalli dagbók. Afleiðingarnar eru afdrifaríkar en koma þó ekki í ljós fyrir en sex árum síðar þegar konan áttar sig á að rannsóknartilgáta hennar hefur í öll þessi ár verið byggð á röngum forsendum, og að ritgerðin, heilar 600 síður, er að öllum líkindum þvættingur frá upphafi til enda. Í örvæntingu sinni grípur hún til þess eina ráðs sem virðist geta bjargað henni úr skelfilegum aðstæðum, en verknaðurinn eykur bara á hremmingar hennar og áfallið í kjölfar þessa alls verður til þess að gömul veikindi taka sig upp. Buguð og í fræðilegri sjálfheldu frestar hún námslokum og fylgir eiginmanni sínum heim til Íslands. Þar burðast hún með leyndarmál sitt og laskaða sjálfsmynd gagnvart fjölskyldu og vinum, og tekst á við afleiðingar veikinda sinna, ofskynjanir, sem virðast þó að lokum ætla að opna henni leið út úr ógöngunum.
Kompa er skáldsaga um uppruna sögulegra heimilda og tilviljunarkennda varðveislu þeirra.
Sigrún Pálsdóttir lauk doktorsprófi í sagnfræði frá University of Oxford árið 2001 og hefur frá námslokum einkum unnið við ritstjórnarstörf; frá árinu 2008 sem ritstjóri Sögu, tímarits Sögufélags. Fyrri bækur hennar eru Þóra biskups og raunir íslenskrar embættismannastéttar (2010) og Sigrún og Friðgeir. Ferðasaga (2013)
Kompa er skáldsaga um uppruna sögulegra heimilda og tilviljunarkennda varðveislu þeirra.
Sigrún Pálsdóttir lauk doktorsprófi í sagnfræði frá University of Oxford árið 2001 og hefur frá námslokum einkum unnið við ritstjórnarstörf; frá árinu 2008 sem ritstjóri Sögu, tímarits Sögufélags. Fyrri bækur hennar eru Þóra biskups og raunir íslenskrar embættismannastéttar (2010) og Sigrún og Friðgeir. Ferðasaga (2013)
166 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
18 people are currently reading
773 people want to read
About the author
Sigrún Pálsdóttir
10 books21 followersSigrún Pálsdóttir is a writer and historian. Born in Reykjavík in 1967, she completed a PhD on the history of ideas at the University of Oxford in 2001, after which she was a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Iceland. She worked as the editor of Saga, the principal peer-reviewed journal for Icelandic history, from 2008 to 2016, and she has been a freelance writer since 2007. She first came to prominence as a writer of historical biographies. Her debut in 2010 was the acclaimed Þóra biskups (Thora: A Bishop’s Daughter), followed by Ferðasaga (Uncertain Seas) in 2010, the story of a young couple and their three children who were killed while sailing from New York to Iceland aboard a ship torpedoed by a German submarine in 1944. Her first novel, Kompa (That Little Dark Room), was released in 2016 and her second, Delluferðin, in late 2019. Pálsdóttir’s biographies have been nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, the Women’s Literature Prize and the DV Cultural Prize for Literature. Her book Ferðasaga was chosen as the best biography of 2013 by booksellers in Iceland. Kompa, her debut novel, was nominated for the Icelandic Women’s Literature Prize in 2016 and in 2019 was published in the US by Open Letter (University of Rochester’s literary translation press) under the title History. A Mess.
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December 6, 2022
Is archival research a special case of the general messiness of life?
This novel took me back to my University days. One post-grad frequently used by our college for maths supervisions seemed to be permanently trapped in pre-PhD stasis. Rumour had it that he had been about to complete his thesis only to discover an error in the maths on the very first page, one that served to completely undermine the brilliant proofs that followed.
History, A Mess translated by Lytton Smith (also translator of the brilliant Öræfi) from the Icelandic original by Sigrún Pálsdóttir, has, at its heart, a similar premise.
Our narrator was, some year ago, in the early days of research for her thesis in art history at a UK university. She was transcribing the recently discovered manuscript of a diary from 1642-3, looking for confirmation that the author of the diary, signed only With the initials S.B., would turn out to be the painter S.B., the artist responsible for the famous portrait of Viscount Tom Jones but the experience is rather tedious:
"This day, after I was redie, I did eate my breakfast."
Day 201. And with these words, I had written this same sentence out two hundred and one times. And, following on from it, the paragraph comprising each journal entry. The task had already taken me about six months: despite the incessant repetition, the linguistic nuances in this cramped ancient manuscript were significant enough to cause me considerable labors. And still the result was always the same: nothing of note. Nothing but rigid, rather uninspiring testimony to a humble existence, an existence to which it was practically impossible to accord any greater meaning, even though it was 365 years old.
But then she suddenly comes upon one entry that not only gives her the confirmation that the diarist is indeed the artist, but something even more remarkable: a strong hint that S.B. is a woman, making her the first known female portrait artist of the period:
There was no doubt the creator of that famous portrait of Viscount Tom Jones was my diary writer, S. B. But could it be that S. B. was a woman? "Busie fouldinge some linan and airinge clothes?" A trailblazer? Had I just found a new beginning in the history of Western art? Frenzied jubilation thrilled through my body, words burst within me freighted with tremendous power, inside my head sentences and then pages formed one after the other so that by the time I stepped out of the building into the outside courtyard, my introduction was well underway.
But five years later, as her thesis is undergoing a final polish, she realises that she missed a page in the diary in her transcription, and what is on that page strongly suggest her hypothesis was completely wrong:
The page I flipped past without transcribing and without reading, the page which overturned in just a few sentences my entire hypothesis, back then still taking shape, a hypotheses I was about to spend the next five years developing further and putting down over the six hundred pages that were waiting to be written. And none of this I realised until I was fine-timing the thesis, checking one single word in one single sentence.
Rather than abandon her thesis, or refocus it, her immediate instinct is to remove the offending page from the manuscript. But, emotionally shocked by the discovery and ashamed of what she has done, she in unable to bring her thesis to completion and returns, a broken woman, to Iceland.
And this short novel then takes a rather different turn to what the set-up might lead one to expect. Most is narrated by our frustrated researcher, but increasingly confined to her house, her life largely lived in her imagination. She discovers what seems to be a previously unseen door in the house where she lives with her husband, one that leads to a small room where she sees strange things - but we, and she, are increasingly unclear what is real and what she has imagined:
Am I creating suspense and expectation out of the unsaid, seeking something to rack my brain over amid my intolerable existence? Might I have taken it upon myself to imagine a door, given the dead-end my life has run into?
Her dreams meld with her reality:
How often can you go over and over a dream in your mind until the scenario begins to crack apart, its images crumbling, their lifetime becoming nothing more than the moment it takes to call them up?
And perhaps most strikingly, her accounts of her social interactions with her friends are part real part imagined. When they go on a weekend break together, she declines to join but then vividly imagines what might be happening.
Lytton Smith's translation creates a wonderfully effectove atmosphere, using the passive voice to strong effect as discussed in the interview linked below:
Interviewer: Another major aspect of the novel is how inward-looking it is, how much of it rests on conveying the voice of the narrator—specifically, the ups and downs of her neuroses and how they feed into the text. Was that a particular challenge to translate?
Translator: It was, very much so—and I love that you’re so aware of how important that inward-looking quality is, as it’s more than a character trait; it structurally and stylistically governs how the novel is written, its very form. I was thrilled that you’d noticed the use of the passive voice in the translation. It’s perhaps a touch more pronounced there than in the original, because Icelandic can bear that passive a little more than English, yet it feels like the right way to capture how this book works, how its voice thinks. The challenge, often, was taking that risk, going against the instinct to smooth out, which would have been to prioritize page-turning plot over something far deeper and more important to the novel, its sense of atmosphere. I hope that’s a choice that does justice to the book; some reviewers have complained about it. Yet I had a great conversation with a bookseller about the ways the novel had gotten under his skin. I think that’s what the novel wants to do, so the way the translation helps the interiority across is worth it—even if, or because, it strikes a reader as idiosyncratic in English.
And then, when it felt that perhaps the academic research thread of the novel had rather faded, the author brings the novel to a very neat conclusion - revealing the spoiling words on the page but suggesting an even more radical re-intepretation - an ending both tragic and redemptive.
Recommended - and another example of how most of the interesting literary writing is being done outside of the Anglosphere
This is the latest from the Asympote book club. See here for a complete list of the books and my reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The Asymptote Book Club's introduction to the novel:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
A review:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/crit...
An illuminating interview, by the same reviewer, with the translator:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
This novel took me back to my University days. One post-grad frequently used by our college for maths supervisions seemed to be permanently trapped in pre-PhD stasis. Rumour had it that he had been about to complete his thesis only to discover an error in the maths on the very first page, one that served to completely undermine the brilliant proofs that followed.
History, A Mess translated by Lytton Smith (also translator of the brilliant Öræfi) from the Icelandic original by Sigrún Pálsdóttir, has, at its heart, a similar premise.
Our narrator was, some year ago, in the early days of research for her thesis in art history at a UK university. She was transcribing the recently discovered manuscript of a diary from 1642-3, looking for confirmation that the author of the diary, signed only With the initials S.B., would turn out to be the painter S.B., the artist responsible for the famous portrait of Viscount Tom Jones but the experience is rather tedious:
"This day, after I was redie, I did eate my breakfast."
Day 201. And with these words, I had written this same sentence out two hundred and one times. And, following on from it, the paragraph comprising each journal entry. The task had already taken me about six months: despite the incessant repetition, the linguistic nuances in this cramped ancient manuscript were significant enough to cause me considerable labors. And still the result was always the same: nothing of note. Nothing but rigid, rather uninspiring testimony to a humble existence, an existence to which it was practically impossible to accord any greater meaning, even though it was 365 years old.
But then she suddenly comes upon one entry that not only gives her the confirmation that the diarist is indeed the artist, but something even more remarkable: a strong hint that S.B. is a woman, making her the first known female portrait artist of the period:
There was no doubt the creator of that famous portrait of Viscount Tom Jones was my diary writer, S. B. But could it be that S. B. was a woman? "Busie fouldinge some linan and airinge clothes?" A trailblazer? Had I just found a new beginning in the history of Western art? Frenzied jubilation thrilled through my body, words burst within me freighted with tremendous power, inside my head sentences and then pages formed one after the other so that by the time I stepped out of the building into the outside courtyard, my introduction was well underway.
But five years later, as her thesis is undergoing a final polish, she realises that she missed a page in the diary in her transcription, and what is on that page strongly suggest her hypothesis was completely wrong:
The page I flipped past without transcribing and without reading, the page which overturned in just a few sentences my entire hypothesis, back then still taking shape, a hypotheses I was about to spend the next five years developing further and putting down over the six hundred pages that were waiting to be written. And none of this I realised until I was fine-timing the thesis, checking one single word in one single sentence.
Rather than abandon her thesis, or refocus it, her immediate instinct is to remove the offending page from the manuscript. But, emotionally shocked by the discovery and ashamed of what she has done, she in unable to bring her thesis to completion and returns, a broken woman, to Iceland.
And this short novel then takes a rather different turn to what the set-up might lead one to expect. Most is narrated by our frustrated researcher, but increasingly confined to her house, her life largely lived in her imagination. She discovers what seems to be a previously unseen door in the house where she lives with her husband, one that leads to a small room where she sees strange things - but we, and she, are increasingly unclear what is real and what she has imagined:
Am I creating suspense and expectation out of the unsaid, seeking something to rack my brain over amid my intolerable existence? Might I have taken it upon myself to imagine a door, given the dead-end my life has run into?
Her dreams meld with her reality:
How often can you go over and over a dream in your mind until the scenario begins to crack apart, its images crumbling, their lifetime becoming nothing more than the moment it takes to call them up?
And perhaps most strikingly, her accounts of her social interactions with her friends are part real part imagined. When they go on a weekend break together, she declines to join but then vividly imagines what might be happening.
Lytton Smith's translation creates a wonderfully effectove atmosphere, using the passive voice to strong effect as discussed in the interview linked below:
Interviewer: Another major aspect of the novel is how inward-looking it is, how much of it rests on conveying the voice of the narrator—specifically, the ups and downs of her neuroses and how they feed into the text. Was that a particular challenge to translate?
Translator: It was, very much so—and I love that you’re so aware of how important that inward-looking quality is, as it’s more than a character trait; it structurally and stylistically governs how the novel is written, its very form. I was thrilled that you’d noticed the use of the passive voice in the translation. It’s perhaps a touch more pronounced there than in the original, because Icelandic can bear that passive a little more than English, yet it feels like the right way to capture how this book works, how its voice thinks. The challenge, often, was taking that risk, going against the instinct to smooth out, which would have been to prioritize page-turning plot over something far deeper and more important to the novel, its sense of atmosphere. I hope that’s a choice that does justice to the book; some reviewers have complained about it. Yet I had a great conversation with a bookseller about the ways the novel had gotten under his skin. I think that’s what the novel wants to do, so the way the translation helps the interiority across is worth it—even if, or because, it strikes a reader as idiosyncratic in English.
And then, when it felt that perhaps the academic research thread of the novel had rather faded, the author brings the novel to a very neat conclusion - revealing the spoiling words on the page but suggesting an even more radical re-intepretation - an ending both tragic and redemptive.
Recommended - and another example of how most of the interesting literary writing is being done outside of the Anglosphere
This is the latest from the Asympote book club. See here for a complete list of the books and my reviews: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The Asymptote Book Club's introduction to the novel:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
A review:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/crit...
An illuminating interview, by the same reviewer, with the translator:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...
July 23, 2019
This book completely eluded me, and I've read more than a few books from Icelandic authors. It starts with a woman who has discovered something in the archives that could change everything about art history but then her credibility starts to unravel. It turns at times surreal, where she seems to be experiencing things others are not (or is this mental illness?) Her relationships seem to suffer from harm she caused but doesn’t always remember, and then her friend groups feel like a sea of unknowable women with a mass of stories. I want others to read this and explain it to me.
I received a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss. It comes out July 23, 2019.
I received a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss. It comes out July 23, 2019.
May 22, 2019
The existential turmoil of having one’s academic thesis scuppered through missing two vital pages in a 17thC text is explored in this weird Icelandic novel. The narrator spends her time among an arch autodidact mother, fur-hatted self-important friends, and a cipher-like husband, keeping her shameful omission to herself as her inner world and career prospects implode. The narrative mode is interiorised to an opaque, strange degree, lingering on the minutiae of movements, recalling the detachment of the nouveau roman, leavened with an ironical wit that prevents the plotlessness from succumbing to snooziness. Another fine translation from poet Lytton Smith who translated the marvellous Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller. And kudos to N.J. Furl, one of the world’s finest book designers, for the particularly striking cover art.
December 17, 2019
One has to presume that this book’s title is actually “History” but that it was accidentally swapped by the printer with the headline of an appropriately negative review. This is why, emblazoned on the front of all English editions of the book, are the words “History. A Mess.”
Say what you want about history, but this book really is a mess.
And not in a fun way. After all, “a mess” offers the potential for cheer, chaos, catharsis. No, this “History” is a bore.
Yes. “History. A Bore” would have been a much better title. Ambitious, yes, but a bore nonetheless.
Which is a shame. I like Iceland, where Miss Pálsdóttir is from, and I like stories in this particular genre. You know the one I mean, the genre in which our protagonist, in an effort to achieve personal fame and fortune, or perhaps just advance a particular cause, makes a “discovery”, takes a few too many personal liberties, writes a biography of a famous individual without actually consulting said famous individual, resulting in the historical event or person in question becoming distorted, fictionalized.
Think Lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger, Clifford Irving's The Hoax, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, or the Vanity Fair article by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H.G. Bissinger detailing the rise and fall of New Republic journalist Stephen Glass, who was found to have plagiarized many of his articles.
Deception sells. Especially, it would seem, after the deceiver has admitted to the deception. Why is that? Do we just love discovering that the wool has been pulled over our eyes? That someone previously thought to be heroic or trustworthy did something villainous?
Regardless of the reasons for the popularity of this genre, making up events or altering a person’s biographical details doesn’t usually end in the person or event being made boring. It’s almost always the opposite.
So why then is “History. A Mess” such a bore? Such a slog? Such a … mess?
The plot essentially concerns an art history student researching her thesis. She reads a diary, which is about as bone dry as the book we’re reading, discovers the diary belongs to a famous English portrait artist and, based on its content, comes to believe the portrait artist to be a woman, at that time a nigh unheard of thing. It’s all very exciting news for our protagonist who, flooded with attention, gears up to hit the speaking circuit and revel in the fame and admiration long due her.
Except … except two pages got stuck together, hiding one crucial page with its crucial detail that reveals our “female” artist is, in fact, just a typical dime a dozen male artist. Our protagonist has made a critical error, and now she can just bid farewell to any thought of the fame that had been awaiting her.
Or maybe not. Because, damn, her thesis is just about to be published and she really can’t stomach admitting her mistake because it would be really embarrassing.
As interesting as all that sounds, I regretfully inform you that it is not. The truly interesting thing is how this novel manages to be just as lacking in amusing qualities on its last page as it was on its first.
I should have given up 50 pages in. At that point, I was already writing the review in my head as I read, trying to think of things that were dry that I could relate to the writing.
Sand in the Sahara, the Amazon under Bolsonaro’s watch, my skin in Arizona …
At 75 pages, I’d already developed a deep antipathy for the author. How can she expect anyone to read this? How dare she waste my time?
The blurbs all said it was a “slow burn”, a novel that “slowly reveals itself”, that the “slow unveiling of the plot is one of its charms” … slow, slow, slow. And yes, it was slow, but no, it is utterly without charm.
On page 35 our protagonist notes that she has only received six bottles of wine, despite the fact that seven women came to the gathering she is hosting.
Who didn’t bring a bottle?
THAT would have made for interesting reading. A book exploring that very question would trounce this one in terms of sheer interest. But no, it’s a single line, thrown away and now it’s gone and she’s off reciting the number of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, getting anxious about a door in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed before … slowly going mad the British way and making us all mad the American way in the process.
Don’t attempt to wade through this “mess”. If you do, just remember you were warned on the cover.
Say what you want about history, but this book really is a mess.
And not in a fun way. After all, “a mess” offers the potential for cheer, chaos, catharsis. No, this “History” is a bore.
Yes. “History. A Bore” would have been a much better title. Ambitious, yes, but a bore nonetheless.
Which is a shame. I like Iceland, where Miss Pálsdóttir is from, and I like stories in this particular genre. You know the one I mean, the genre in which our protagonist, in an effort to achieve personal fame and fortune, or perhaps just advance a particular cause, makes a “discovery”, takes a few too many personal liberties, writes a biography of a famous individual without actually consulting said famous individual, resulting in the historical event or person in question becoming distorted, fictionalized.
Think Lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger, Clifford Irving's The Hoax, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, or the Vanity Fair article by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H.G. Bissinger detailing the rise and fall of New Republic journalist Stephen Glass, who was found to have plagiarized many of his articles.
Deception sells. Especially, it would seem, after the deceiver has admitted to the deception. Why is that? Do we just love discovering that the wool has been pulled over our eyes? That someone previously thought to be heroic or trustworthy did something villainous?
Regardless of the reasons for the popularity of this genre, making up events or altering a person’s biographical details doesn’t usually end in the person or event being made boring. It’s almost always the opposite.
So why then is “History. A Mess” such a bore? Such a slog? Such a … mess?
The plot essentially concerns an art history student researching her thesis. She reads a diary, which is about as bone dry as the book we’re reading, discovers the diary belongs to a famous English portrait artist and, based on its content, comes to believe the portrait artist to be a woman, at that time a nigh unheard of thing. It’s all very exciting news for our protagonist who, flooded with attention, gears up to hit the speaking circuit and revel in the fame and admiration long due her.
Except … except two pages got stuck together, hiding one crucial page with its crucial detail that reveals our “female” artist is, in fact, just a typical dime a dozen male artist. Our protagonist has made a critical error, and now she can just bid farewell to any thought of the fame that had been awaiting her.
Or maybe not. Because, damn, her thesis is just about to be published and she really can’t stomach admitting her mistake because it would be really embarrassing.
As interesting as all that sounds, I regretfully inform you that it is not. The truly interesting thing is how this novel manages to be just as lacking in amusing qualities on its last page as it was on its first.
I should have given up 50 pages in. At that point, I was already writing the review in my head as I read, trying to think of things that were dry that I could relate to the writing.
Sand in the Sahara, the Amazon under Bolsonaro’s watch, my skin in Arizona …
At 75 pages, I’d already developed a deep antipathy for the author. How can she expect anyone to read this? How dare she waste my time?
The blurbs all said it was a “slow burn”, a novel that “slowly reveals itself”, that the “slow unveiling of the plot is one of its charms” … slow, slow, slow. And yes, it was slow, but no, it is utterly without charm.
On page 35 our protagonist notes that she has only received six bottles of wine, despite the fact that seven women came to the gathering she is hosting.
Who didn’t bring a bottle?
THAT would have made for interesting reading. A book exploring that very question would trounce this one in terms of sheer interest. But no, it’s a single line, thrown away and now it’s gone and she’s off reciting the number of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, getting anxious about a door in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed before … slowly going mad the British way and making us all mad the American way in the process.
Don’t attempt to wade through this “mess”. If you do, just remember you were warned on the cover.
July 24, 2021
з одного боку — cautionary tale про те, що буває, якщо занадто перейматися докторантурою.
з другого — страшенно, безпросвітно сумна історія про жінку, яка бачить те, чого, можливо, нема, не бачить того, що, можливо, є, і не наважується просити про допомогу.
з другого — страшенно, безпросвітно сумна історія про жінку, яка бачить те, чого, можливо, нема, не бачить того, що, можливо, є, і не наважується просити про допомогу.
September 18, 2019
Everything leads us to believe that there exists a spot in the mind where the real and imaginary will cease to appear contradictory
The abbreviated quote by André Breton appears twice in the novel as a Trivial Pursuit question exchanged between characters and seems a nice jumping off point for a review. The full quote is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8804...
This surrealist novel attempts to manifest the quote in fiction and may seem difficult to understand but I suggest reading through in either one or two sittings without worry about meaning and enjoy the experience having finished. There is a loose plot line describe in blurbs and reviews but I felt I did not enjoy the novel till I dropped my expectations and let the novel flow. Rounding this up to four stars based on the author's ambition.
The abbreviated quote by André Breton appears twice in the novel as a Trivial Pursuit question exchanged between characters and seems a nice jumping off point for a review. The full quote is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8804...
This surrealist novel attempts to manifest the quote in fiction and may seem difficult to understand but I suggest reading through in either one or two sittings without worry about meaning and enjoy the experience having finished. There is a loose plot line describe in blurbs and reviews but I felt I did not enjoy the novel till I dropped my expectations and let the novel flow. Rounding this up to four stars based on the author's ambition.
July 24, 2019
“I have to make up my mind what the devil is happening, because otherwise I’ll go mad from fear. But I may already have done so: what moves inside the picture is not behind the glass. It's reflected in the glass. It’s standing behind me.”
Hiding inside a closet, monitoring your mom and boyfriend beneath the door while waiting for an opportunity to sneak out and lie that you’ve been out
walking to get some fresh air, you’re startled to see that maybe the delightful little hallucination of people inside a framed poster moving in the dark is something actually happening.
That’s the wavelength you’re on when reading this book, and since the extended narration of dreams and anxiety daydreams mix with the real world, I too was constantly doubting whether anything I was reading was real.
This is an agoraphobic experience, and the shifts in time expertly show how and why the narrator has ended up in this mess, and why hiding behind a previously unnoticed door has such an appeal.
Hiding inside a closet, monitoring your mom and boyfriend beneath the door while waiting for an opportunity to sneak out and lie that you’ve been out
walking to get some fresh air, you’re startled to see that maybe the delightful little hallucination of people inside a framed poster moving in the dark is something actually happening.
That’s the wavelength you’re on when reading this book, and since the extended narration of dreams and anxiety daydreams mix with the real world, I too was constantly doubting whether anything I was reading was real.
This is an agoraphobic experience, and the shifts in time expertly show how and why the narrator has ended up in this mess, and why hiding behind a previously unnoticed door has such an appeal.
June 20, 2024
okei
April 2, 2024
Arusaamatu, segane sonimine.
January 30, 2023
3.5 stars
The premise of this one seemed intriguing with a narrator who thinks she’s found an undiscovered female artist from the seventeenth century yet has made a mistake which threatens everything she has worked towards. We hear little about the content of the thesis, this novel is far more about academia and research and its pitfalls and expectations, the integrity and eye for detail that must be part of that and what happens when that fails. The story unfolds slowly so that the details of the anguish our narrator is facing are only gradually made apparent and as her mental state deteriorates, what is real and is not can become challenging to grasp.
The parts with her friend group were more enjoyable, this group of seven very different women and their interactions but as with all the characters in the novel including the narrator, they are never fleshed out, described by their jobs, their clothes and their opinions, but little more and the male characters even more so. There is a sense of a fog around everyone she meets which goes well with her state of mind where it almost feels like she is living within the thesis at some points, but it makes for quite a surreal reading experience where you aren’t sure what is real and what isn’t and where time and place change mid page. At one point the friends are playing Trivial Pursuit and a quote comes up from Andre Breton which seems to sum this up, ‘Everything leads us to believe that there exists a spot in the mind where the real and the imaginary will cease to appear contradictory.’
I was compelled to keep reading though, wanting to see where the novel would end up and really appreciated the last short section of the book as we are removed from the mind of the narrator. It’s a clever book and has some interesting ideas and I appreciated the writing - I’m just not sure it was all that satisfying a read.
The premise of this one seemed intriguing with a narrator who thinks she’s found an undiscovered female artist from the seventeenth century yet has made a mistake which threatens everything she has worked towards. We hear little about the content of the thesis, this novel is far more about academia and research and its pitfalls and expectations, the integrity and eye for detail that must be part of that and what happens when that fails. The story unfolds slowly so that the details of the anguish our narrator is facing are only gradually made apparent and as her mental state deteriorates, what is real and is not can become challenging to grasp.
The parts with her friend group were more enjoyable, this group of seven very different women and their interactions but as with all the characters in the novel including the narrator, they are never fleshed out, described by their jobs, their clothes and their opinions, but little more and the male characters even more so. There is a sense of a fog around everyone she meets which goes well with her state of mind where it almost feels like she is living within the thesis at some points, but it makes for quite a surreal reading experience where you aren’t sure what is real and what isn’t and where time and place change mid page. At one point the friends are playing Trivial Pursuit and a quote comes up from Andre Breton which seems to sum this up, ‘Everything leads us to believe that there exists a spot in the mind where the real and the imaginary will cease to appear contradictory.’
I was compelled to keep reading though, wanting to see where the novel would end up and really appreciated the last short section of the book as we are removed from the mind of the narrator. It’s a clever book and has some interesting ideas and I appreciated the writing - I’m just not sure it was all that satisfying a read.
October 20, 2019
This book gradually grew on me the further I got, once I'd tuned into its tone. Very impressed and with a nice neat twist at the end
September 2, 2020
Still processing this. This was a surprising book, which went to places I really did not expect. Not necessarily an easy read, certainly not a cheerful one, but worth the time and trouble.
August 29, 2024
This was an interesting one— not especially enjoyable, but interesting (and elusive). Tone was frantic, tumbling, academic. About a historian who’s been working on her dissertation for many many years (a breakthrough about a historic Dutch artist that she determines was actually a woman!) until she discovers that she missed a page in the manuscript/diary that unravels all 600 pages of her dissertation and its claims. A mental health spiral ensues, and it’s mirrored in the novel’s form and style —we’re all over the place, I was never quite sure what was going on, what was “real” or imagined. Mental health is a significant theme, and the main character grapples w headaches and hallucinations. (There’s a link to a mother/daughter theme, here, as she begins to realize much of what she’s dealing with her mother dealt with also.) Artwork crawls out of its frame, doors appear where they never were before, etc.
At about the halfway point, I stopped trying to situate myself in the narrative and relaxed, let myself just go with the flow and found the experience somewhat more enjoyable (even when the story takes an unexpected dark turn near the end??! Like! What really!). Regardless—glad I read it! My first Icelandic novel! Maybe something of vigdis hjorth, but even more unhinged/off the rails (it’s possible!).
At about the halfway point, I stopped trying to situate myself in the narrative and relaxed, let myself just go with the flow and found the experience somewhat more enjoyable (even when the story takes an unexpected dark turn near the end??! Like! What really!). Regardless—glad I read it! My first Icelandic novel! Maybe something of vigdis hjorth, but even more unhinged/off the rails (it’s possible!).
July 10, 2023
Six years into her PhD, an art history scholar realises her thesis is completely wrong. She promptly goes insane. Ummmmmm so we all agree this belongs in the horror genre, yes? However, I couldn't fully get into the fragmented style.
April 7, 2024
Pingeline, haarav ja saladuslik pealkirjast kuni viimase lauseni. Mõtlemisainet jagub. Mida võib teha üks sõna, võibolla isegi ainult üks täht - viia olulise avastuseni või põhjustada katastroofi. Pisiasjad, detailid määravad.
Põnev lugemine doktorantidele, õppejõududele, miks mitte ka magistrantidele ja teistele uurijatele, loojatele, avastajatele. Tuttavad tunded, kahtlused, kõhklused, segadus, ahastus, valu, unes või ilmsi? Ja meie deemonid, hiiglased ja (pääste)inglid. Milline ja kus asub sinu pelgupaik, salakamber? Kuhu tõmbad piiri(d)? Millised on sinu väärtused?
Ilmselt mõned kirjavead, tähevead eesti keeles olid meelega teksti kirjutatud tulevastele põlvedele tõlgendamiseks ;)
Põnev lugemine doktorantidele, õppejõududele, miks mitte ka magistrantidele ja teistele uurijatele, loojatele, avastajatele. Tuttavad tunded, kahtlused, kõhklused, segadus, ahastus, valu, unes või ilmsi? Ja meie deemonid, hiiglased ja (pääste)inglid. Milline ja kus asub sinu pelgupaik, salakamber? Kuhu tõmbad piiri(d)? Millised on sinu väärtused?
Ilmselt mõned kirjavead, tähevead eesti keeles olid meelega teksti kirjutatud tulevastele põlvedele tõlgendamiseks ;)
August 31, 2024
I thought this was going to have more of a dark academia vibe or even a fun academia vibe would have been good but there was more of a focus on the weirdness and insanity of the main character than anything to do with the PhD or thesis. I was looking forward to a book about academia because I usually love them but it this just didn’t quite hit the mark for me. The plot line about the thesis is a very small part of the book and is scattered quite strangely through the novel so the whole book feels a bit disjointed. There is definitely a weird girl vibe to some parts where the main character is hanging out with her friends and becomes obsessed with a strange door she finds in her house, but there was a lack of cohesion for me with all these different elements and the way they were structured didn’t seem to work. At times it felt like I was reading three different books all mashed together rather than one well contained novel. I did like the idea though, and these different parts all had really good moments throughout the book - the structure just wasn’t pleasant enough to sustain the enjoyment of it for me and so giving this a 3 stars.
November 9, 2023
I read this at a time when I was experiencing a minor personal crisis that mirrored the tail end of this novel. It's a rather straightforward novel about an art history PhD student who makes a discovery in the midst of revising her thesis that threatens to undo her years of hard work and emotional investment. Along the way, there is some trenchant commentary about art-making, the toil and dedication it entails—which all amounts to what exactly?
As the protagonist slowly loses her grip on her sanity, the perils of her intellectual ambition are detailed here in excruciating detail, as are her neuroses and career anxieties. I understood her suffering deeply, so much so that it shed light on my own real-life situation and how I too often stake so much of my life upon external circumstances out of my control. The novel's clever ending offers some optimism: in the end the protagonist's labour does bear fruit, though not in the way she expected and not without an air of tragedy.
As the protagonist slowly loses her grip on her sanity, the perils of her intellectual ambition are detailed here in excruciating detail, as are her neuroses and career anxieties. I understood her suffering deeply, so much so that it shed light on my own real-life situation and how I too often stake so much of my life upon external circumstances out of my control. The novel's clever ending offers some optimism: in the end the protagonist's labour does bear fruit, though not in the way she expected and not without an air of tragedy.
"I silently curse time. In the arts, time is nothing but a destructive force; the challenges of science, on the other hand, are unbreakable, causing our wrestling with them to be more constructive as time becomes the future. In science, you open doors for whomever comes next; in art, you slam doors shut behind you, causing the story to gradually wind down: it is now at an end. Not because the distinction between non-art and art has long since disappeared, but because anyone who wants to start up a story, to continue to spin the thread of visual experience, cannot progress forward because both subject matter and technique fix the imagination, restrict creativity. And our world cannot refresh itself fast enough to feed us new illustrations for old methods."
May 16, 2020
Reading this was like waking up from a dream - maybe a nightmare - wherein you're pretty clear about the general emotional state but you find that the details escape you, scattering in the increasingly visible face of the dawn. Much rests on the power we give to our archival interpretations, and the guilt of mis-interpreting them, which to me seems to aggrandize nostalgia's power, but maybe that's just me.
March 4, 2020
This book is beyond me. It serves the purpose of making me feel stupid. Clearly I’m a bad reader. I struggled to follow a plot line. I struggled to get to know the characters. And I ultimately failed at both. The blurb on back says , “Absolutely brilliant from beginning to end.” What’s wrong with me? I’m not seeing it.
March 21, 2023
Some good stuff in here, but ultimately I found it a bit of a slog.
November 11, 2024
Minu arvamuse raamatust leiab blogist https://triinuraamatud.wordpress.com/...
February 2, 2022
Palsdottir fashions an intriguing story about a Nordic woman mucking about mental illness while completing her master’s thesis in Art History. The novel holds the reader’s attention because of its central mystery— what’s on page 221 that caused the academic to have a full-on nervous breakdown. The fascinating bits of the story include how the main character narrates her story as if she were sane and how her family and friends leave oddities in her behavior unspoken, even putative suicide attempts. The postmodern style reflects the protagonist’s disjointed and hallucinatory thinking. I liked it.
Read
August 20, 2019Abandoned at page 63....
January 26, 2024
"Why hasn't anyone mentioned this door since we moved in? Perhaps for the same reason as the truth about my many years of research refuses to come to the surface: I cannot, of course, bring myself to think about it, no, not so much as put it into words inside my own head. And all around me there's a wonderful silence, a momentary understanding that there's been a little dent to my health, nothing more, that has caused my studies to have been suspended for the foreseeable future."
History is definitely a mess but, so is this book. I don't fault Sigrún Pálsdóttir, or Lytton Smith who has translated the novel from the Icelandic. It's a classic case of mistaken expectations. I had got this "dark academia, but make it experimental lit fic" vibes here but it turned out to be a frequently tedious exploration of an academic who's slowly losing her sanity after finding out that the radical discovery at the core of her PhD thesis is, in fact, incorrect. Recklessly, she tears out the page that makes her wrong from the manuscript, quits her PhD close to completion, and then returns home.
In Reykjavik, the narrator and her husband move into a new home while she becomes withdrawn. There she finds a new room and old memorabilia of the old owners, figures crawl out of paintings, and dreams interfere with reality. She evades all queries about her dropped degree and pretends she's just taking a break as she figures out what to do next. The prose is great and the atmosphere is intense. There are remarkable chapters centered on her close friends. Sadly, it's quite a detached narrative though. I could not make myself bother about the narrator's admittedly trifling problems.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
February 26, 2023
It wasn’t for me, really struggled to get into it and sort of knew what the conclusion was going to be anyway so meh.
December 19, 2017
Þessi var erfið yfirferðar en áfram bisaðist maður þó í von um úrlausn. Í millitíðinni ráfar frásögnin fram og til baka í tíma og ávarpar fólk héðan og þaðan úr fjölskyldusögu og lífi aðalkaraktersins. Slíkt flæði eða frelsun frá tíma og rúmi þarfnast einstakrar færni til þess að tapa ekki hreinlega lesandanum, sem ég er hræddur um að textinn geri oft á tíðum. Þrátt alveg einstakann hæfileika höfundar til að draga upp heildstæða mynd af karakterunum með bara nokkrum vel völdum orðum eða ábendingum og eftirtektarverða og skemmtilega efnishluta er varða vinkonur og fjölskylduboð sem leyfa lesandanum eilítið að kasta mæðunni og njóta ferðarinnar þá er textinn samt sjálfselskur og gefur lítið af sér. Slíkt væri að sjálfsögðu fyrirgefanlegt ef að úrlausn sögunnar, sem ýjað er að snemma í bókinni og er í raun megindrifkraftur lesandans, reyndist ekki síðan vera fremur máttlaus og ekki ná að bæta okkur upp fyrir alla ranghalana og erfiðið.
Orð: poplínkápa / hurðargerefti / örlagalúði / beykilíkisborðplata / fúksíubleikt / sírenubleikt / gólfinni / flatbytna / velgjulegt / fimmmenningar / puti
Tilv: „Og í þeirri sögulegu staðreynd liggur grunnurinn að hinu flókna sambandi hennar og Grétu, sem var öll á bókina en sírásandi í einkalífinu – Þrífráskilin – þar sem mamma fór aftur á móti með sigur af hólmi með skósvein sinn sér við hlið, læknir og ljúfmenni sem virðist hafa einhverja óstöðvandi þörf fyrir að trana henni fram sem vitsmunaveru. Umfram tilefni og umfram það sem gæti talist eðlilegt í ástríku hjónabandi.“ (25) / „...[eins og] tveggja stúlkna móðir með öryggishjálm á höfði í bæklingi...“ (lýsing, 35) / „Þegar hann spurði mig annars hugar hvort ég gæti ekki tekið bíl heim af spítalanum breyttist sársaukinn minn í þá undarlegu vellíðan sem skyndileg andstyggð á ástvini útheimtir. Og nú vildi ég engan við hlið mér, ekki einu sinni pabba og mömmu. Ég ákvað að njóta hnífsstungunnar til hin ítrasta með því að ganga í gegnum þetta alein.“ (111) / „Letingi í hægra auga.“ (lýsing, 121)
Orð: poplínkápa / hurðargerefti / örlagalúði / beykilíkisborðplata / fúksíubleikt / sírenubleikt / gólfinni / flatbytna / velgjulegt / fimmmenningar / puti
Tilv: „Og í þeirri sögulegu staðreynd liggur grunnurinn að hinu flókna sambandi hennar og Grétu, sem var öll á bókina en sírásandi í einkalífinu – Þrífráskilin – þar sem mamma fór aftur á móti með sigur af hólmi með skósvein sinn sér við hlið, læknir og ljúfmenni sem virðist hafa einhverja óstöðvandi þörf fyrir að trana henni fram sem vitsmunaveru. Umfram tilefni og umfram það sem gæti talist eðlilegt í ástríku hjónabandi.“ (25) / „...[eins og] tveggja stúlkna móðir með öryggishjálm á höfði í bæklingi...“ (lýsing, 35) / „Þegar hann spurði mig annars hugar hvort ég gæti ekki tekið bíl heim af spítalanum breyttist sársaukinn minn í þá undarlegu vellíðan sem skyndileg andstyggð á ástvini útheimtir. Og nú vildi ég engan við hlið mér, ekki einu sinni pabba og mömmu. Ég ákvað að njóta hnífsstungunnar til hin ítrasta með því að ganga í gegnum þetta alein.“ (111) / „Letingi í hægra auga.“ (lýsing, 121)
October 18, 2019
In "History. A Mess", everything is open to interpretation. A young Icelandic woman reading for her PhD in Art History believes she has uncovered the secret identity of one of Britain's first professional female artists from an old, difficult to read manuscript. While preparing for final publication however, she discovers that two pages of the old manuscript had stuck together, and what she reads there seems to totally refutes her thesis.
The blurb on the back cover of the book describes "History. A Mess" as funny and colourful, but I found it to be dark and full of anxiety. It's a difficult book to read, not because of content, but because of the way it's written. What is reality and what is product of imagination (or a descent into depression and mental illness?) It certainly must have been a challenge for the translator, Lytton Smith. The reveal in the last pages was worth reading this short novel to the end, though.
I'd actually give a 3 1/2 star rating, and that may go up to a 4 after a second reading.
The blurb on the back cover of the book describes "History. A Mess" as funny and colourful, but I found it to be dark and full of anxiety. It's a difficult book to read, not because of content, but because of the way it's written. What is reality and what is product of imagination (or a descent into depression and mental illness?) It certainly must have been a challenge for the translator, Lytton Smith. The reveal in the last pages was worth reading this short novel to the end, though.
I'd actually give a 3 1/2 star rating, and that may go up to a 4 after a second reading.
July 28, 2024
It seems deeply ironic to be reading History. A Mess., by Sigrún Pálsdóttir (and translated by Lytton Smith) only a few weeks after Naomi Wolf gave a devastating interview, in which she learns that she made a serious mistake in interpreting historical documents. Her thesis disappeared in a puff of smoke during that interview. In this brief, sometimes bewildering book, another woman makes a mistake with her primary source only to realize it just before turning in her thesis. This mistake was the basis of the entire thesis. Fixing it would mean starting all over and our protagonist has already spent six years trying to get her doctorate in art history...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.
August 28, 2019
A twisty and clever book about historical scholarship and the nature of truth.
May 7, 2024
Ma alustasin lugemist lootuses leida eest reis akadeemilise kõrghetke poole pürgiva inimese eluvoogudesse. Poolel teel arvasin ma, et mind ootab ees kõlekrimka Islandi marinaadis, kus ontlik akadeemik leiab oma kodust midagi nii kohutavat, et kogu ühiskonna alustalad mõranevad ja päeva pealt hakatakse vulkanoloogide erose kehastusel perekonnanimesid panema. Aga lõpetasin ma hoopiski sissevaatega ühe naise ellu - aga läbi mitme erineva põlvkonna ja ajastu.
Alguses oli unistus käsikirjast, mis toob akadeemilisel maastikul nii ihaldatud au ja kuulsuse - ja milleni jõudmiseks peab orjama rohkem, kui impeeriumi jagu! Mind kõnetas nii väga, et ka selle teose peategelane haaras sõnasabast kinni, kui oma doktoritöö teema kasuks otsustas (mina ka ...). Lugedes - nii raamatut ennast kui ka peategelase uuringuid kandvaid tekste - saab selgeks, et silmapiiril terendab "avastus" ... ("tean saladust, riigi saladust" kummitab mul kõrvus tänaseni ...) Ja siis see juhtub - kahtlusenool tabab nii autorit kui ka lugejat piksenoolena selgest taevast! Kas tõesti eksisin ... ? (nii peategelasest töö autorina kui ka lugejana ...)
Ei puudu ka konteksti avavad ja kaikaid lineaarsuse kodaraisse viskavad vinjetid ja pastiššid avardamaks nii peategelase kui ka tema kaaskonna - nii kauges Oxfordis kui ka kodus Reykjavikis - hingeelu ning selle seotust peategelase akadeemilise tööga. Ootused, lootused, nõudmised, etteheited ... Nii lihtne on kaduda endasse ning uppuda neisse ilma, et keegi ulataks abikäe, puudutaks su hinge ja küsiks "kuidas Sinuga on? ..."
Sinu enda ootused oma töö suhtes. Su juhendaja ootused sinu suhtes. Su vanemate ootused nende realiseerumata unistuste suhtes. Sõprade ootused endi suhtes, mis kantud kaudselt soovist sinu tegude valguses mitte varju jääda - hei, ma tunnen seda doktorit!
Ja siis see juhtub, see saatuslik viga! Mida teha?! Kas olla aus ja tunnistada eksimust - aga see hävitaks ju mu perekonna ... Loota, et keegi ei märka - see on kaasaegne ja obskuurselt ülidetailne akadeemiline maailm, kus suur pilt jääb tihti nägemata ... agsa kui keegi ikkagi näeb, mis siis ... Või oli see koletu tegu siiski ainus võimalus, mul ei olnud teisi valikuid!
Paljulubav eluküünal kustub alati kõige ebaõiglasemal ajahetkel ... Aga nii nagu fööniks võib tõusta tuhast, võib ka leinast leida jõudu ja veendumust viia lõpule see, mis olnud leeki meeles peab. Ema ajab kõik joonde!
Alguses oli unistus käsikirjast, mis toob akadeemilisel maastikul nii ihaldatud au ja kuulsuse - ja milleni jõudmiseks peab orjama rohkem, kui impeeriumi jagu! Mind kõnetas nii väga, et ka selle teose peategelane haaras sõnasabast kinni, kui oma doktoritöö teema kasuks otsustas (mina ka ...). Lugedes - nii raamatut ennast kui ka peategelase uuringuid kandvaid tekste - saab selgeks, et silmapiiril terendab "avastus" ... ("tean saladust, riigi saladust" kummitab mul kõrvus tänaseni ...) Ja siis see juhtub - kahtlusenool tabab nii autorit kui ka lugejat piksenoolena selgest taevast! Kas tõesti eksisin ... ? (nii peategelasest töö autorina kui ka lugejana ...)
Ei puudu ka konteksti avavad ja kaikaid lineaarsuse kodaraisse viskavad vinjetid ja pastiššid avardamaks nii peategelase kui ka tema kaaskonna - nii kauges Oxfordis kui ka kodus Reykjavikis - hingeelu ning selle seotust peategelase akadeemilise tööga. Ootused, lootused, nõudmised, etteheited ... Nii lihtne on kaduda endasse ning uppuda neisse ilma, et keegi ulataks abikäe, puudutaks su hinge ja küsiks "kuidas Sinuga on? ..."
Sinu enda ootused oma töö suhtes. Su juhendaja ootused sinu suhtes. Su vanemate ootused nende realiseerumata unistuste suhtes. Sõprade ootused endi suhtes, mis kantud kaudselt soovist sinu tegude valguses mitte varju jääda - hei, ma tunnen seda doktorit!
Ja siis see juhtub, see saatuslik viga! Mida teha?! Kas olla aus ja tunnistada eksimust - aga see hävitaks ju mu perekonna ... Loota, et keegi ei märka - see on kaasaegne ja obskuurselt ülidetailne akadeemiline maailm, kus suur pilt jääb tihti nägemata ... agsa kui keegi ikkagi näeb, mis siis ... Või oli see koletu tegu siiski ainus võimalus, mul ei olnud teisi valikuid!
Paljulubav eluküünal kustub alati kõige ebaõiglasemal ajahetkel ... Aga nii nagu fööniks võib tõusta tuhast, võib ka leinast leida jõudu ja veendumust viia lõpule see, mis olnud leeki meeles peab. Ema ajab kõik joonde!
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