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A review by nonabgo
Inima omului by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Magda Răduță
5.0
The loveliest, heartbreaking but also hope-giving conclusion to a series that made my little Grinchy heart sing.
While the first two novels were death-focused, there's a lighter, more hopeful approach here. The boy returns from his last journey, a dreadful one, through excruciating cold and snows that can last for years - a journey of self-discovery, in the end - to settle into his life as a student, torn between blond and red hair, between the promise of a comfortable life and the struggles of poverty. A love story of sorts, though not quite. "The Heart of Man" is still about choice, about understanding one's purpose and place in the world.
"Why are we here, if there are places in the world called Paris?"
Summer in Iceland lasts for a blink of an eye. There's a hedonistic feeling throughout, a world in contradiction to that depicted in the previous volumes - colorful, lively, the grass so green and the sky so blue. Stefánsson is a master landscaper, a John Constable of literature. I was the boy, running with my bare feet in the juicy grass, smelling the earth after summer rains. It's impossible to defeat winter, you can only survive it or live with it. But if you survive it, oh, what delight!
The boy grows up, becomes a man, learns about himself while at the same time learning about the world. And the world around him is also changing - modernity, in the form of steamships replacing sailing ships, telephone lines connecting remote villages, and women becoming bolder in taking ownership of themselves. Summer brings not only new life in the surrounding nature, but also new life in the village.
And everything is tied together by words. Words that hurt and smell burnt and words that heal. Letters that bring news, and letters that speak of longing and love. Words that question everything and words that bring clarity.
This book is about death, but it's more about life and what it means. About happiness and where it comes from. There's no need to know much about life, the important thing is to enter it and know how to meet it when it comes to you. With a painfully beautiful lyricism, Stefánsson talks about growing up, discovering oneself, about hope, love, friendship. He dissected the soul and placed it on a silver platter before our eyes, with a deceptive delicacy that hides a powerful voice. Stefánsson seduced me irrecoverably from the first to the last page.
While the first two novels were death-focused, there's a lighter, more hopeful approach here. The boy returns from his last journey, a dreadful one, through excruciating cold and snows that can last for years - a journey of self-discovery, in the end - to settle into his life as a student, torn between blond and red hair, between the promise of a comfortable life and the struggles of poverty. A love story of sorts, though not quite. "The Heart of Man" is still about choice, about understanding one's purpose and place in the world.
"Why are we here, if there are places in the world called Paris?"
Summer in Iceland lasts for a blink of an eye. There's a hedonistic feeling throughout, a world in contradiction to that depicted in the previous volumes - colorful, lively, the grass so green and the sky so blue. Stefánsson is a master landscaper, a John Constable of literature. I was the boy, running with my bare feet in the juicy grass, smelling the earth after summer rains. It's impossible to defeat winter, you can only survive it or live with it. But if you survive it, oh, what delight!
The boy grows up, becomes a man, learns about himself while at the same time learning about the world. And the world around him is also changing - modernity, in the form of steamships replacing sailing ships, telephone lines connecting remote villages, and women becoming bolder in taking ownership of themselves. Summer brings not only new life in the surrounding nature, but also new life in the village.
And everything is tied together by words. Words that hurt and smell burnt and words that heal. Letters that bring news, and letters that speak of longing and love. Words that question everything and words that bring clarity.
This book is about death, but it's more about life and what it means. About happiness and where it comes from. There's no need to know much about life, the important thing is to enter it and know how to meet it when it comes to you. With a painfully beautiful lyricism, Stefánsson talks about growing up, discovering oneself, about hope, love, friendship. He dissected the soul and placed it on a silver platter before our eyes, with a deceptive delicacy that hides a powerful voice. Stefánsson seduced me irrecoverably from the first to the last page.