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Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness's Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Snæfells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead. But once he arrives, the emissary finds that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress.
What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced "ooh-a," which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept? Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.
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Errika Walker
reviewed Under the Glacier on January 23, 2008
Under the Glacier
It's not that I hated "Under the Glacier" or didn't get a chuckle from it occasionally (OK, more like a wan smile). But to call it, as Susan Sontag did, "a marvelous novel about the most ambitious questions" and "one of the funniest books ever written," is a stretch. (And btw, I'm glad I was never invited to comedy night at the Sontags).
Written by Icelandic Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness, "Under the Glacier" is the story (using the term loosely) of a bishop's emissary who hunts for the truth (using the term loosely) about what has gone on with the parish pastor (ditto on the loosely) of a remote district next to a glacier. There are rumors that Pastor Jon has not held church services in years (true), is long separated from his wife but has refused to seek a divorce (maybe) and may have hauled a dead body onto the glacier without a proper burial (very maybe).
The entire mercifully short novel is written in a style I would call Scandinavian magic surrealism, where hardly any character is what he or she seems, no one is "normal," and where a mysterious woman may be dead, or alive, or a bit of both.
The narrator, in keeping with his instructions to merely be the eyes and ears of the bishop and render no opinions, designates himself either "the undersigned" or "embi" (for emissary of the bishop, get it, wink wink?).
Mixed in is a housekeeper who makes only baked goods, a self-defensive truck driver, a man who perpetually loses horses, a wealthy expatriate who returns with three latter day hippies to oversee a resurrection, and a casket which it takes several chapters to open and then reveals its contents to be .... well, you'll have to enter the maze to find out.
The theology in this novel is profound in a way that would impress Shirley MacLaine; the humor has not a side split nor a knee slap in sight, and the bottom line is, well, let's see ... maybe not to tramp around through a bog at night without shoes on? -- that's as good a guess as any.
It does have its moments, but not enough to get me up the side of the glacier to three stars.
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Add Under the Glacier, Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness's Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against th, Under the Glacier to your collection on WonderClub |
