A lovely blend of imagery and allusion that draws heavily on the seafaring myths of various nations. At the end of the book, narrator responds to the assertion that he has changed since returning from the voyage recounted in the book with another question: "What is the point of travelling if not to broaden your mind?" An odd little lyrical beauty, I really liked it very much. B+.

Not as great as Moonstone, but the poetic style of his writing was still there. I love Sjon's writing! Only two more English-translated books and then I'm going to have to learn Icelandic.

I’m not sure what to make of this unusual book. Its combination of various mythical tales felt almost like a bedtime story. There were some points that were put in but never explained, and I can’t decide if I liked this or not. I liked the way it was told in snippets with a main perspective and then a speech or a song or a tale. A fun and quick to read, sort of reminded me of a Studio Ghibli movie like Spirited Away.

It was ok, not great. Doesn't compare to The Blue Fox.

I received this book for Christmas from a friend who'd heard great things-- and heck, even Bjork was a big fan! What could possibly go wrong?

It was a quick read. Almost too quick, in fact. The major plot arc is set up as a fascinating collision of myth and truth, in which storytelling and reality circle one another and prepare for inevitable battle.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead....



Except it was entirely evitable. Because it doesn't happen. Not much of anything does, if we're being honest. One of my major pet peeves in fiction is a dull protagonist, particularly one who is plucked from the ordinary and tossed into the extraordinary, and either doesn't notice, doesn't understand, or doesn't care about the shift. This book is a particularly egregious offender.

After finishing, I felt the need to read professional reviews, so certain that I had missed some critical development in the story. Instead I stumbled upon an interview with the author and nearly puked into my mouth. I had missed nothing, except that (light a clove cigarette, toss on your best plaid and shirt and bow tie) "that was sooooo the point". The author had literally written the book as a cut-and-paste contrast of two already-written stories--one real, based on an ancestor's memoirs; one mythical, chosen seemingly at random-- in order to satirize the foolishness of the former. No, really. The whole book is a dull joke about his great-grandfather's inanity.

I understand this kind of satire. Really, I get it. I'd like to think that anyone with a high school diploma could get the joke: a character has his face buried so deep in his silly views that he fails to see what's right in front of him. This isn't a new joke. Maybe once upon a time it was original. But today, its proper place is in a vignette. Maybe a short story. But drawing it out a little bit without any real elaboration on the theme, and then calling it a brilliant novel? That's frankly offensive to the readers' intelligence.

Unsatisfying, dull, and lazy. Hurray for postmodernism!

Beautiful [translated] language, effortlessly smart, hilarious.

The story follows the fascinating journey of a vaguely nationalist, possibly racist, Scandinavian fish enthusiast and scholar soon after the end of WWII. The elderly narrator embarks on his voyage on a commercial ship liner, and meets Canaeus, one of Jason's Argonauts (yes, one of those Jason's Argonauts), among other interesting characters. An interest in mythology and classical history will go a long way when reading this short novel. Also, a predilection for unreliable narrators and the absurd. Highly recommended.

'The wind was in our favor.'

Stories are the building blocks for our lives and the whole of human history. We all have our own personal experiences which we share with others to create an image of ourselves in their minds, and through the stories of our ancestors we can chart the progression of history as it marches toward the present, while witnessing the creation and destruction of all the civilizations, religions and other governing systems of belief across it’s ever-growing timeline. Even our early moral lessons are often instilled in us by children’s fables and folktales. Language and narrative are essential tools in our understanding the world around us, which makes literature and mythology such a valuable barometer for the culture it was born within. Icelandic author Sjón’s The Whispering Muse (2005) uses the conversations and stories which fill the decks and dining halls of a Danish steamship as a consummate catalyst for an amalgamation between the tales of Jason and the Argonauts, as well as Norse mythology, Christianity, sailor’s songs, and the political climate in the fallout of WWII. Both playful and ponderous, The Whispering Muse launches the reader on an abstract voyage where the boundaries of myth, cultures, and reality itself begin to dissolve, and a larger, more encompassing vision of humanity begins to take form. Through a variety of narrative devices and subtle connections, Sjón intricately layers together individual sagas and culture mythos to create an epic in miniature that forms a gateway between the real and the mythological as well as an intersection of cultural and religious traditions.

Sjón has earned an impressive reputation back home for his novels, poems, plays, and song lyrics (preformed by Bjork), and is now slowly gaining readership outside of Europe. Rightfully so, as this quiet novel leaves quite the lasting impression through its subtle knots of narrative structures and mythology. There is a poetic ecstasy lurking within The Whispering Muse underpinned by a filter of a stuffy academic narrator. It’s like hearing breath-taking music muffled on the other side of a thick wooden door, and while the technique works for humorous reasons within the novel, it is nearly impossible to not read another of his novels as if throwing the door open in hopes of being washed in that elusive poetic beauty (this promise is fulfilled in [b:The Blue Fox: A Novel|16059541|The Blue Fox|Sjón|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1365218049l/16059541._SX50_.jpg|2663201]). Keeping tight control on his pace and prose, Sjón has created something wonderful here.

Valdimar Haraldsson, a pompous and overbearing journalist whose life work is to expound on his belief that the Nordic people are genetically superior due to their fishing industry and diet of fish, details the several days spent aboard the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen on the first leg of it’s passage from Norway to Turkey. The choice of the insufferable academic as narrator is brilliant as it opens up a comedic rift between what transpires and the way he perceives it, and he often misreads or is utterly oblivious to the social cues of those around him. Haraldsson takes everything far more serious than anyone else, which is a point of bewilderment to the crew at times, and sees the world through a very narrow perspective. This forms the great irony in the novel, as Sjón builds an elaborate human mosaic that can only be seen through the perepheries or lapses in the narrator’s restrictive vision and the vast assortment of perceptions are funneled down into the driest and most self-important of them all. Much of the poetic beauty that reaches his ears comes out through his narrative voice in dusty terminology and pretentious adornments, and the true reactions of the crew can only be discerned by reassessing the fleeting bits of descriptions that have already re-forged in his mold of perception.

Each night after dinner (a humorous bit that resurfaces a few times is that, while the crux of Haraldsson’s theory is the Nordic’s fish consumption, the ship never serves fish.), the second mate tells a continuing story of his time sailing with Jason and the Argonauts. While the story is seemingly outlandish, crude, and improbable, the crew never seems to doubt it’s validity, much to the chagrin of our narrator, who is doubly aggravated by the ‘prop’ through which the mate puts to his ear and hears the story from: a splinter of wood from the Argos.

I hear something that could best be compared with the soporific hiss of our shortwave radio receiver: as if a handful of golden sand were being shaken in a fine sieve…Once the ear has fallen asleep, the humming takes on a new form. It becomes a note, a voice sounding in the consciousness, as if a single grain of golden sand had slipped through the mesh of the sieve and, borne on the tip of the eardrum’s tongue, passed through the horn and ivory-inlaid gates that divide the tangible from the invisible world.

We all have our muse. We have our history, our loves, longings, hopes and sorrows that compel us to tell our stories. The world is a collection of stories, and each story is filled with stories within them. Even if we are the lead in our own story, each secondary character down to the walk-on extras have their own stories to tell. Whispering Muse is composed of all these stories within stories, often told through differing voices (the narrator usually, but not always, admittedly supplying his own variation on the actual words), and different narrative forms such as Norse lyrical epics or simple drinking songs. This is a story of Haraldsson’s voyage with many other narratives that weave in and out of it and further telescope into the narratives that are contained inside them as well.

While each individual thread within the novel is captivating on it’s own, it is the subtle ways through which they intersect that is most impressive. The narratives point towards each other like the two ends of a bridge unfinished in the middle. Our minds understand and apply the non-existent bridge as the connection between both ends, and it is this non-existent bridge, this abstraction, where we find the heart of Sjón’s story. There is the Greek myth of Jason in which the crew is treated to a ballad telling the violent Nordic myth of Sigurd and Gudrun, further emphasizing the mix of Greek mythology with the Nordic setting of Haraldsson’s story. Similarly, the extended stay of the Argo’s in Lemnos coincides with the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen being held at port through the Easter season until the factory crew can return to work and load the ship and the Christian Easter story is reflected in the Greek tale of Caeneus when he is nailed to a cross to heal his broken body. The separate myths and stories begins to all hum together to form a euphoric choir of voices delivering a poignant melody of humanity as one giant mythos. Theses characters all experience the pain of humanity as a whole having suffered the horrors of WWII, and there is a subtle cry for worldwide unity that is forever fractured by the political struggles that the characters still see around them. Sjón seems to offer a hope that can come only if we break down our barriers and open our minds. In this new world where reality and myth blur, even the impossible can be possible.

There seemed to be a misogynistic vibe throughout the slim novel, however. The female roles are often seen as conniving tricksters (such as the Purser’s girlfriend—who is only known by her relation to the male figure of the Purser, one of the subtle ways language can be used to show her as subservient), sex workers, or pitiful creatures needing the comfort an protection of the men of the Argos. This may be used to reflect the stereotype of rough, roguish seamen, and it reflects on the way women have been treated poorly through history. Men have shaped them into this position through their tales, and, as [a:Adrienne Rich|29947|Adrienne Rich|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1636163511p2/29947.jpg] offers in her poem Diving into the Wreck, mythology has chained women to these roles in the perceptions of men since they grow up hearing these stories and have their beliefs shaped by them. Towards the end there is a dramatic and heart wrenching account of a young maiden's rape by Poseidon (

Spoiler

she then chooses to become a man to avoid any further rape

) and the emotional response it elicits from the Purser’s girlfriend. The crew gives her a moment of silence to collect herself and shows her due respect, and the narrator reads this as ‘the weeping [was] for all of us. Four years had passed since the end of the great conflict but we still couldn’t believe that humanity had won.’ Perhaps this is to show an empathy for the women and that the horrors of war which befell all, men and women, have allowed people to see one another as equals in humanity. I’m not sure if this is completely unfounded, yet the misogyny seems intentional only to be used to further Sjón plead for worldwide unity and equality. As Adrienne Rich stressed, we must rewrite the myths. I leave this issue to those with better reading powers and insight than my own.

The Whispering Muse is a fantastic little novel that serves as a perfect introduction to this Icelandic author. Quietly edging forward, Sjón never falters with his polished balance of intertwining stories that blossom out of each other like fractals. It left me wanting more, showing that the author has huge potentials that were not quite reached in this book, some of them being self-imposed restrictions such as the narrators stuffy grip on the prose. A fun and fascinating re-telling of Greek mythology, as well as an engaging story of ships and frosty landscapes, The Whispering Muse is a delicate, delightful book of great imagination where reality is reshaped and the myths walk among us.
3.75/5