Customer Reviews

The Journey Home

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Olaf Olafsson inhabits two seemingly disparate worlds - he is vice chairman of Time Warner Digital Media in New York, and Iceland's bestselling novelist. While I cannot confirm his business acumen, I can enthusiastically attest to his mastery of the literary arts.

The Journey Home, Mr. Olafsson's second novel is a languid yet riveting distillation of a woman's life, an uncommonly beautiful diary of her physical and emotional quest. It is a very human story of one who possesses strengths and frailties, intuition and self-delusion. The author limns these traits sympathetically yet with unflinching candor.

Disa Jonsdottir and her younger sister, Joka, enjoy a rather idyllic childhood with their doctor father and demanding mother in 1930s Iceland. As young women Disa and Joka are sent to the Commercial College in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, which is where Disa becomes enthralled with cooking. Contrary to her mother's wishes she goes to England hoping to become a world class cook. However, the rift between Disa and her mother is an estrangement that will haunt.

Once in England Disa relishes and is emboldened by her freedom. She falls in love with Jakob, a German Jew, who has just completed his doctoral thesis. The pair give free rein to their passions, escaping to a small cottage in the English countryside. But, despite their thrall, they cannot ignore the distant rumblings that will soon shatter all of Europe.

Jakob fears for the safety of his parents, and returns to Germany in an effort to help them escape the Holocaust. But there is no deliverance; he, too, is consigned to Buchenwald.

Bereft and alone, Disa returns to Iceland where she takes a position as cook in the home of the wealthy Haraldsson family. There she is challenged to prepare tempting meals for the reclusive mistress of the house and confronts a mysterious adult son, Atli, who has just returned from Germany. No one speaks of Atli's activities in Germany. When Disa uncovers his secret, she derides herself for having been blind.

Later, some 20 years after the war she will again be in England where she will live with an old friend, Anthony, a gay squire. The two transform his family home into Ditton Hall, a respected country hotel, where Disa reigns supreme in the kitchen and oversees the hostelry's staff. Although she bridles at any criticism of her culinary art, she has indeed achieved her dream of becoming a first-rate cook.

Nonetheless, her emotional life is barren, her relationships with others tenuous as she buries her past, confronting it only when an unforeseeable event compels her to do so. It is then that she embarks on a last journey home to Iceland.

With The Journey Home Mr. Olafsson has created a work rich in imagery - the spare, unforgiving scenes of Iceland juxtaposed against the reassuring warmth of England's country summer. The inexorable march across Europe versus a kitchen fragranced by savory comestibles.

With Disa he has created a memorable character - her story haunts, her voice echoes again and again.

In the tiniest of vignettes, most only a page or two long, Olafsson creates a pointillist portrait of Disa, a middle-aged Icelandic woman, and the people and events from her past over which she still feels guilt and distress. She is on her way back to Iceland from England, where she and her friend Anthony have run a country hotel for many years, and where she has acquired a reputation as a fine chef. Her trip "home" is an attempt to find peace and to achieve the satisfaction of knowing her life has had meaning. This is an urgent quest--Disa has only twelve to eighteen months to live, and her life is full of unresolved traumas.

Olafsson uses the diary Disa keeps on her journey to intersperse sensitive, often powerful, memories from the past with her recollections from her more recent life in England. She is an intense and independent woman who sometimes reacts more sensitively toward the natural world around her than to the people with whom she has had relationships. We relive her estrangement from her mother and sister, her heartache in love, her love for her father and her secret life in Iceland, her protectiveness for her partner Anthony, her relationships with her employers and later with her employees, and her desperate romantic fling during a particularly vulnerable time. As in our own daydreams, we relive Disa's memories and the feelings they evoke in random order, not always knowing why they are important until later memories provide the keys to understanding. As her memories and nightmares intensify, the suspense grows. As Disa says, "The soul can take delight in small things if one's dreams only leave it in peace long enough."

Although Disa probably has enough traumas in her life for three novels, Olafsson avoids some of the usual pitfalls of romances by spacing out the details and requiring the reader to draw the conclusions. He tempers sensational revelations by including repeated images or symbols within them--apples, thrushes, storms, views from windows, music, the color red, the cold--to make us think. By the time the real reason for the trip to Iceland is revealed, most readers will have guessed it, but we sympathize with the unfortunate Disa and her journey, nevertheless. This is an emotion-packed rollercoaster of a novel, with a multitude of period details, sure to keep readers on edge. Mary Whipple

This is the first work I have read by. Mr. Olafur Johann Olafsson, however after reading, "The Journey Home", I look forward to whatever he presents next. The book is beautifully assembled but that does not keep it from portraying a complex woman who has bitter regrets, has suffered the horror of war, damaged familial relations, and at times almost self-imposed solitude.

The book is written in almost a series of notes, the protagonist actually carries a journal and mentions taking notes on her final trip home, however the book reads as if she always kept a diary. Not a day-to-day diary, but one that culls the highest and the lowest points of her life, and some that document her philosophy. The section that describes her thoughts on cooking and why a recipe should never be written down is simply brilliant. I would imagine those who cook would rarely take issue with her poetic thoughts.

The book is about a woman who is living out the estimated time of her remaining days. What was so enjoyable was that this did not portray some wistful mindless reminiscences, rather a woman who while admitting her mistakes, is basically content with the life she has lead. She is a confident woman and unusually so, for her thoughts of religion are the same as they have been for her life prior to illness, she does not make religion convenient, she remains true to what she has always been.

A very good book by an especially talented Author who wrote this volume from the perspective of a woman. I read a work by the Master Storyteller Mr. Roddy Doyle when he too wrote from a female's perspective, and Mr. Olafsson's work is every bit as good.

For three days what a thrill it has been for me to forget most of my advent chores while reading THE JOURNEY HOME by Ólaf Ólafsson. His sensous descriptions of people and nature in Iceland and in England touched me. In England Dísa thinks back to Kópasker and Reykjavík. In the U.S. I think back to the latter and The Landisles. The author fully developes recognizable, interesting caracters as well as he did in his book OBSOLUTION.I liked his father's ( I danced with him as a teenager) many popular books and I admire his son's many achievements.

Mr. Olafsson weaves a suspenseful tale in undulating phrases of divine language. This darkly poetic novel will enchant you with every page turning. Richly descriptive yet succinct in its glory, the book embraces the reader in a warm cinematic glow.

I've never read a character study with such page-turning qualities. I simply could not put this book down. What a subtle, beautifully executed tale. The story of Disa's return to her Icelandic roots is told in snatches of memory and personal reflections. Olafsson's development of her character is just amazing, bringing to mind the works of Alice Munro and David Leavitt. Disa's life unfolds before us in slow, dark strokes. Her illness and her personal journey shed light on why we as humans make some of the choices we do, and how we deal with the consequences of those choices. Very enlightening and extremely engaging.

Disa didn't come alive for me and parts of the book felt contrived, especially Disa's estrangement from her mother. So her mother disapproved of her career choice -- that's hardly enough of a reason for Disa to cut her mother out of her life. Disa's moment of sadness at not being able to say goodbye when her mother died was false -- something she was supposed to say because that's how a daughter should feel. Same with her feelings for the child she gave up -- forced emotion.

Much is made of her "journey home" to Iceland, but it didn't seem that Iceland meant that much to her, and we didn't see anything about Iceland that formed her character or shaped her life. It could have just as easily been Pennsylvania.

She's a woman with secrets and a lost, tragic love. She has persevered. This made it even more infuriating on the journey home, when she dismissed her fellow passengers as unworthy of her attention. Wouldn't she have a clue that people aren't always what they appear to be?

Disa's self-delusion, self-aggrandizement, and self-pity kept me from having any sympathy for her. Maybe that's what Olafsson intended. Disa is emotionally removed from everything except food. The times when she talked about cooking were the only times she felt like a real person to me.

Icelanders have often travelled abroad--first as Vikings, then as immigrants, and in contemporary times as individuals seeking a different world. These ex-patriots people the novels of Olaf Olafsson--they may be emigrants, but they are still of Iceland.
In ABSOLUTION the setting is Manhattan, and the back story is Scandinavia during the Second World War. The hero is not a likeabe person--corrupt, self-engrossed, potentially a criminal. It is a tribute to the subtly of the novel that we come to like him. The redemptive twist at the end works even for readers (like me) who as a rule don't like a startling revelation at the end--this one is satisfying.
The heroine of THE JOURNEY HOME is a more likable protagonist--she has her faults, but like an old friend, one can put up with them. Disa Jonsdotir left Iceland as a young woman, in search of a career as a chef. She goes to England, but the disappearance of her German-Jewish lover and family events propel her back home, where she confronts not just the dry Lutheranism of her family but the rise of pro-Nazism in Iceland itself. As an aging and terminally ill woman she not only looks back but goes back on one last journey.
The Iceland of these novel is a complex one. It contains childhoods of startling pristine Arctic beauty--and depression and despair. Interiors might be out of Ibsen--restrained, middle-class. Protagonists don't rail against fate--they try to aim for happiness but don't necessarily triumph. However, small moments serve as compensation.
Disa says: Sometimes you have to get a grasp on yourself to keep your thoughts under control, but it's worth it. The reward is just around the next corner, whether it is a clutch of perfect eggs in a basket or the sound of birdsong on a still day. The soul can take delight in small things if one's dreams only leave it in peace long enough."
***
For more reviews by Sagan see Miriam's Well [...]

I read The Journey Home several years ago with my book club. I found the prose lyrical and descriptive and could visualize the details...the scenery, landscapes,butterflies and food. At times, it read as a journal which is a style I enjoy reading and can connect with. Disa, the main character, was a strong woman who endured much and grew as a person throughout it all. The ending touched my heart as a mother. It is a bittersweet ending in which I shed a few tears. I could relate to the depth a mother has for her son. I found the time period covered during the war in Germany and time of the Holocaust was written accurately and respectfully.

Asdis - "Disa" - Jonsdottir and her partner Anthony run a twenty-four room hotel, Ditton Hall, in the Lake District. When Dr Ellis tells Disa that she is terminally ill and has a life expectancy of twelve to eighteen months, she decides to undertake the long journey from England to Iceland where she was born. It is not until the end of the novel that the reader gets to know what brings Disa to undertake her journey home.
As she travels memories unfold in her mind about her sister Joroun and her suicide, her brother Kari, her former servant Marilyn, her childhood in Kopasker, her years at the commercial college in Reykjavik where she studied bookkeeping, her first post in London at the Restaurant Boulestin and her first love for Jakob Himmelfarb, "a quest for disappointment" in her eyes.
The novel reads like a beautiful diary and the reader has the sense that he is admitted into Disa's intimate world. She is exquisitely and delicately portrayed by the author. We share her happiness, regrets, achievements and failures and the story gracefully weaves between past and present.