Customer Reviews

The Fish Can Sing (Vintage International)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Laxness' book, "The Fish Can Sing" is a remarkable book. At first, it seems like a random series of vignettes about early 20th-century Icelandic life, full of detail and life, but appearing loosely bound at best. But by the end of the novel, the reader realizes he is in the hands of a master craftsman as the rich detail provided in earlier chapters come back to play important roles in the culmination of the book and its plot.

There's an endless array of well-defined, complicated, and vivid characters. There's the lavish countryside painted simply - evoking the same feeling you get from a good watercolor. Then there's the plot, which is mysterious and complex, but leaves you with much to ponder.

A nod to the translator, Magnus Magnussen, because the prose is fertile and poetic. It's unbelievably rich, yet brilliantly sparse. This is the way prose should be.

Laxness and Magnussen have given us a beautiful, soulful book. It's a remarkable read.

The Fish can Sing (or, as it is known in Icelandic, The Annal of Brekkukot) is one of Laxness's finest and most intimate novels. It successfully weaves together several narrative threads: it is an orphan's lyrical coming-of-age story, a tragic tale of a "world-famous" singer, and a brilliant description of Reykjavik at the beginning of the 20th century, with its quaint combination of old values (as represented by the storyteller's grandparents) and and more modern influences. As in every Laxness book, the characters are colorful and imaginative, yet always true to life. This book is a gem.

This brilliant work amply demonstrates why its author, Halldor Laxness, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955(?). Without much of a plot--it portrays the maturation and awakening of a young man, Alfgrimur Hanson--"The Fish Can Sing" is nonetheless very rich in characterization and aptly depicts life in early 20th century Iceland. As an American who has lived in Iceland for the last two years, I have grown to appreciate Laxness's insight into the character of the proud and independent Icelandic people. I have read two other Laxness books which I could find printed in English--"Under the Glacier" and "Independent People"--and although those are very good, "The Fish Can Sing" is outstanding and clearly my favorite. Humorous, though-provoking and ultimately very moving, this book is one which you will surely enjoy and not readily forget.

I could not help but think while reading this novel of a Frank Capra film from the 1930s entitled YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU about an eccentric household headed by Lionel Barrymore full of amiable zanies who stump the frenetic world around them.

Laxness, Iceland's only Nobelist, writes of a young orphan named Alfgrim who may or may not be a relative of the great opera singer Gardar Holm, who also hails from Brekkukot, where the old lumpfisherman Bjork maintains a rambling house on the outskirts of what was to become the country's new capital, Reykjavik. This house is filled with lodgers who get to stay rent-free for no other reason than that they ask.

Alfgrim keeps crossing paths with Gardar Holm and the young woman who wants to become the singer's lover. For some reason, the singer always cancels his appointments to the chagrin of his sponsors and fans; and the young woman, Blaer Gudmunsen, is always given the slip. The unhappy Holm is in stark contrast to Alfgrim, who maintains his balance by being suspicious of fame and content with a future of gathering lumpfish.

In the end, this is an feel-good work of considerable artistry, with a masterful, rich sense of characterization. The translation by Magnus Magnusson is excellent, as befits the man who at one and the same time is both one of the best translators of Icelandic Sagas and the TV host of BBC's MASTERMIND and WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYHOW?

The charm of this book is in its atmosphere. You get a wonderful feel of early C20 Iceland and the characters that inhabit it, from the old-fashioned fisherman who ignores market economics to the admirer of modern cesspits. The age of the novel, like its hero, progresses from child to early-adolescent. A particularly charming thing about this novel is the way rather grimy adult features of adulthood are transformed by the place and its people. The cesspit-admirer, for instance, sees modern cesspits solely as an exciting new invention; and the farmers, when they discover barbed wire, just string it up in purposeless and harmless lines across the country.

The plot involves an orphan boy (Alfgrimur) who might be a gifted singer, his experiences while growing up, and his relationship with the elusive "famous Icelandic singer" Gardar Holm. But "fame" appears to be something petty, the god of Danish shopkeepers (Danes, of course, are grown-up) -- and the "one true note" which Alfgrimur seeks can be attained just as well while singing at funerals in the local churchyard.

What a wonderful book. If you loved Independent People as much as I did, you will love this book too. It has the same wit and some similar themes. The book does have a plot (despite what a couple of other reviewers say), but the author develops his story slowly. Once you're "into it" (be patient!) you will be glad for the pace. There are so many marvellous details here to savor. I just loved it, and plan to read it again in the near future.

I have wanted to read a Halldor Laxness novel for awhile, since he is Iceland's national author and I enjoy Iceland and what literature of the country I've read (which is not much). I read a few pages of his most well-known work, Independent People, but couldn't really engage with it. I read a fairly significant amount of Salka Valka, which I someday hope to read all the way through, and really enjoyed it but for some reason just couldn't finish it (it was summer vacation and I was pretty busy, though). So I found myself searching for a Laxness novel I could read all the way through and enjoy all the way through. My school's library has a wonderful collection of Scandinavian texts and virtually all of Laxness' oeuvre, although only a small section of those has been translated into English. I found myself leafing through the first few pages of each of his English translations and finally settled on one.

The Fish Can Sing captivated me immediately, catching me up in its plot from its first line (which is something like "A well-known author once said that apart from losing one's mother, it is most fortunate to lose one's father") and enchanting me with its first chapter and continuing to do so throughout the novel. This is a delightful and pretty easy read, although the philosophical issues it addresses are relatively complex and stimulating. I also have to comment on how well-chosen the English title is, and I think it is far superior to the original Icelandic title, which is very generic and doesn't tell much about the novel itself, although I suppose it is significant. The English title has its origin in one of the poems within the text, which I believe is a sort of proverb and used as a mantra throughout much of the book. Alfgrim, the narrator, wants to be a lumpfisherman like his grandfather, Bjorn of Brekkukot (a farmstead and free-of-charge inn on the outskirts of Reykjavik where many interesting characters come to stay), who is considered one of the poorest men but who is rich in spirit. Alfgrim also finds himself inexplicably connected to the famous singer Gardar Holm, and the two perspectives - fishing and the land-holding and simple lifestyle and the spiritual and material aspects of singing, music, and being a singer - merge in the narrative.

One of the elements I liked about this book is that, as I was reading it, it reminded me of the one of the books I used for my thesis, the Faroese novel The Lost Musicians by William Heinesen, which, I believe, is contemporaneous to The Fish Can Sing (published in the 1950s, taking place a few decades earlier). The Lost Musicians centers around the commercializing fishing capital of the Faroe Islands and how some of its residents, a band of musicians, combat the shadowy forces brought upon their lives largely by the sectarians and their temperance society inhabiting the islands through their music. There are musical references throughout the novels that take music, inscribed in nature, to a higher plane (the novel is also where I gleaned my user name from), and The Fish Can Sing does the same thing. There are many references to ships in each novel, coming and going as a means to improve oneself and seek fame, but in the end what takes on the most importance is that spiritual world of music itself and all that it represents, the deepest wishes, hopes and thoughts (for The Lost Musicians) and finding one's "true note" (for The Fish Can Sing). Money and material possessions are of very little value in both novels, and a world beyond our own takes precedence, as embodied in artistic forms. Both of the novels also center on many different characters in one small area of a small town, providing many contrasting points of view, although since The Fish Can Sing is in first person there is a slightly more narrow scope to the direction of the action. In the end of each novel, also, both the last lost musician, Orfeus, and Alfgrim, sail off on a ship to Denmark to pursue what they may, but one gets the feeling that they will transpose the values of their everyday lives onto their new inhabitance rather than succumbing to the fashion of the times in their colonists' stead.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes "good literature", however you may define that. This book is written by Iceland's most well-known modern/early contemporary author, so I suppose it could be considered popular literature, but it is not overly sentimental or trite. It's a bit like a modern Charles Dickens, or maybe that's just what the translation makes it out to be, but that is the calibre I consider it. You need not know too much about Iceland or its history to fully enjoy The Fish Can Sing - I myself don't know too much - but you will definitely benefit and enjoy it all the more if you do. One scene I find entertaining is the Barber Bill, in which a town assembly discusses whether or not public shaving should be allowed, and if it should be, at what time of day this activity should be able to take place. Luckily, the novel explains a bit of the background so it's not terribly confusing, and the references to saga characters and whether or not it was "proper" for them to shave is an amusing anecdote.

...and this is the one of his sixty novels in which he sings most whimsically and lyrically, somehow transforming his usual deep pessimism into an affirmation of the vigorous and unmaterialistic life of his beloved/detested Iceland. This is a light-hearted, funny book in its sardonic Viking way. It was the first Laxness I read, and it would be a very good choice for anyone who doesn't know the work of the Nobel Prize winner - one they got right! It's a story of a boy and an old man... and aren't a huge number of the world's most touching stories exactly that, stories revealing each of our starts and finishes? It's also quite a travelogue; I'll bet more people plan vacations in Iceland after reading this book than after any amount of brochures and travel agency flyers.

I haven't just finished it, I confess. I read it some ten years ago, and then searched out every novel of Laxness I could find in English or Swedish. Laxness ranks for me among the top five novelists of the 2oth Century. I'm reviewing this now because I'm reading the Penguin edition of Gisli Surson's Saga, and I can't help thinking of the richness of the literary tradition of the people on that Ultima Thule island of fire and ice.

This is a book which can be well described in one word as Charming. My dear friends, this is the story of a boy growing up in an iceland. the boy lives with his grandparents who are from the 'Byorn Barcocot man' tribe - it's charming already. also he falls in love and learns to sing from the well known icelandic singer 'Gerhard Holm' it has no linear narrative but a lot of charming, astounding, delicate little stories told and interwined in a naive and beautiful way of simplicity and delicateness. It's a book to grow up with - but you can well read it as a grown up man.

The Fish Can Sing is an odd little novel about a talented yet humble young man in Iceland. Laxness paints a broad canvas here before settling into the novel's plot; we learn countless small details of everyday life in a small Icelandic village, nearby the capital that is itself a tiny blip on the world map. Everything is warm and inviting, albeit slightly peculiar, and as it continues we become more familiar with the narrator, Alfgrimur. As a protagonist he is nothing special, but the book's strength lies more in its themes and patterns than in characterization. As he matures he forms a surprising bond with his country's biggest star, the famous singer Gathar Holm. Holm travels the world and lives a life of ostensible luxury, yet the closer Alfgrimur grows to him the more he sees fame as fleeting and inauthentic.

This is the book that Laxness was working on when he won the Nobel Prize, to date the only person from his country to have done so, and has a strange beauty to it that is borne from his obvious love for Iceland. Every character here is good-hearted; gone is the brooding protagonist of Independent People, or the Dickensian, conspiratorial villains in World Light. Even the book's gloomiest figure, Holm, is aloof yet always supportive to little Alfgrimur. As Iceland was in the world spotlight, from there emerged this modest, charming and thoroughly Scandinavian book professing its author's intense loyalty to it. This isn't Laxness' best work, but is filled with a certain something that makes it stand out in his ouvre.