101 Reykjavik: A Novel [Paperback]

Hallgrimur Helgason (Author), Brian FitzGibbon (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2007

Hlynur Bjorn sleeps in. He surfs the Web. He tests the efficacy of various pornography. And at night, he hits the K-bar for a few drinks, maybe a tab of E, and perhaps a bit of sex before another crash. He'd blithely remain in this cycle forever, but when his part-time girlfriend reveals she's pregnant, his way of life is threatened. Hlynur withdraws and becomes obsessed with his mother's best friend, only to discover, after he's shagged her, that she's his mother's lesbian lover. And just when you believe he couldn't twist up his life any further, Hlynur finds a way.

Icelandic novelist HallgrÍmur Helgason inhabits his antihero's mind with marvelous acuity, subversive wit, and devilish charm. Hlynur is a true product of our postmodern global culture. Well beyond slackerdom, he lives at home with his mother and depends on social welfare. He's a quick-witted and articulate young man, and there's nothing wrong with him -- other than a total lack of ambition, an off-kilter sense of morality, and a nagging set of existential woes.

Against the backdrop of ReykjavÍk's storied nightlife and amid the swelling global presence of Icelandic culture, Helgason portrays with brutal honesty and humor a young man who takes uselessness to new extremes, and for whom redemption may not be an option. 101 ReykjavÍk is a spectacularly inventive, darkly comic tale of depraved and inspired humanity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you ponder life as an immature Icelandic slacker, then you'll want to check out Hallgrímur Helgason's novel 101 Reykjavík. Hlynur Bjorn lives at home, watches TV and porn when he's not getting high with his divorced mom and/or her lesbian lover, and sluffs off to bars most nights to put a dollar value on women (based on desirability) while hanging out with his equally bored friends. By the time Hlynur faces moral challenges, it's difficult to find reason to care. Hlynur's thoughts are detailed, shotgun style, with some wit and humor (though much is forced), and a strangeness one hopes is the result of Icelandic idiom lost in translation. In a gay couple's bedroom, Hylnur and Hofy enter into this exchange, typifying Helgason's disjointed style:

"Why did you sleep with me?"

Spock.

Hofy turns and looks at me propped up on my elbows with Rosy's hat on my head. Must look pretty weird, I suppose. I tilt my head to allow the hat to fall off, and look up at the ceiling. Looking down at me are two fat, hand-painted, and pretty well-hung angels. Nice one, guys. It's like that chapel in St. Peter's. Michelangelo was gay. Yeah. Maybe it's all in the Bible. I look at her again.

"Why did I sleep with you?"

To be sure, 101 Reykjavík captures the ennui of a cold, depressed generation (and nation), but if "[w]ords are snowflakes. They fall," Helgason might have tried to clear a better path. --Michael Ferch --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Hlynur Bjorn is, by his own admission, a 33-year-old mommy's boy. He lives at home, spends his days watching porn and surfing the Web, and his nights at Reykjavik's nightclubs drinking and taking Ecstasy. He assigns every woman he encounters a monetary value and refuses to commit to spending even a full night with his casual girlfriend, Hofy. When Hofy falls pregnant and his mother announces that her lesbian lover, Lolla, whom Hlynur slept with on New Year's Eve, is also pregnant, he must fight to protect his selfish and shallow way of life. Hlynur tells his own story; although he is clearly intended as a slacker antihero, his humor is so forced ("Iceland is a wind-beaten asshole and Icelanders are the lice on its edge") and his fixations so unoriginal (he likes "two kinds of women: mothers and whores") that his narrative becomes tiresome. Garbled prose ("I slowly return toward the body I left behind, like a car with a running engine") doesn't help, though the translator struggles valiantly with Hlynur's endless punning. When both Hofy and Lolla inform him that he is not the father of their babies, Hlynur becomes more bitter and callous than ever. Realizing that he needs to get out of Reykjavik for a while, he travels to Europe, where he ends up embarking upon his most loathsome attempt at self-destruction yet: trying to contract HIV by having unprotected sex with a prostitute. At this point the novel falls apart. Hlynur is so thoroughly unsympathetic, his antics such a dispiriting blend of pathetic, abhorrent and banal, that the reader ceases caring what happens to him (he neither redeems nor destroys himself). As Hlynur puts it himself, "Was I funny or plain idiotic? Yeah."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (August 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416575073
• ISBN-13: 978-1416575078
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #566,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DID WE READ THE SAME BOOK?, April 3, 2003

By 

Barbara Johnson (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 101 Reykjavík: A Novel (Hardcover)

Helgason's Hlynur is one of the most original characters I've come across lately. I found Hlynur's train of thought hilarious and laughed out loud throughout the book. I wasn't even aware Helgason hadn't written it in English. A lot of the humor rides on word play, so in my opinion, the translation is excellent.

I rooted for Hlynur even during the outrageous prediciments he continually got himself into. At times he stepped over the line between good and bad taste, if that's what it can be called, pushing me nearly to the point of disgust. Then another line that cracked me up put Hlynur back in my good graces again. Not since A Confederacy of Dunces has a character been more hard to take, yet loveable nonetheless.

I knew next to nothing about Iceland and Icelanders before reading this book. I feel as if I've just returned from a few days visit. I highly recommend this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars addictively clever and stylish, April 26, 2005

By 

Nada O'Neal "noneal" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 101 Reykjavík: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book is essentially a deconstruction of Hamlet, with more explicit drug use and pregnancies. A moral tome it is not. But the cleverness abounds. If you love wordplay and aren't too turned-off by self-conscious stylishness (which is here used artfully, I think, to indicate a kind of fumbling), you will greatly enjoy this book. It's the kind of book you read phrase to phrase rather than chapter to chaper - like Shakespeare, you don't read it for the twists and turns of plot, but instead for the twists and turns of phrase. But it's not Shakespeare, either. It's crap, really. But it's like, crap gold.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 101 Rekjavik, July 8, 2009

By 

Tim Sandlin (Grovont, Wyoming) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 101 Reykjavik: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is a modern classic, at least of Icelandic literature. Imagine if Henry MIller had written Tropic of Cancer on crack instead of wine.