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Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Review of WOMAN AT 1,000 DEGREES by Hallgrímur Helgason (New Release)

3.5 Stars
Herbjörg Maria (Herra) Björnsson is 80 years old and living in Reykjavík; she begins the narrative of her life with an interesting opening:  “I live here alone in a garage, together with a laptop computer and an old hand grenade.  It’s pretty cozy.”   What follows is a look back at her life with a focus on the years of World War II when her experiences shaped her character and life thereafter. 

It is the characterization of Herra that stands out.  From the beginning she emerges as a feisty, witty woman but then we see her selfishness which will have some readers turning away.  She describes her uninhibited lifestyle:  “I was independent, had few scruples, and didn’t let anything hold me back – dogma, men, or gossip.  I traveled around and took casual jobs, looked after my own interests, had children and lost one, but didn’t let the other ones tie me down, took them with me or left them behind, just kept moving and refused to allow myself to be drawn into marriage and to be bored to death, although that was the toughest part, of course.”  Even as an octogenarian, she engages in questionable behaviour.  For instance, she has a number of fake identities on social media and uses them to spy on a daughter-in-law and to mercilessly flirt with an Australian man who is obsessed with bodybuilding. 

Those readers who don’t let Herra’s negative traits deter them from continuing through her narrative come to understand her and have sympathy for her.  For instance, she never fits in:  “I was wrong everywhere I went.  To Åse [my Norwegian friend] I was too Danish.  At school [in Denmark] I was too German.  And to everyone too Icelandic.  I never fitted in.  At any time in my life.  In Argentina after the war, people thought I was German and looked at me askance.  In Germany, when they realized I’d been to Argentina, people looked at me askance.  And at home I was a Nazi, in America a Communist, and on a trip to the Soviet Union I was accused of ‘capitalistic behaviour.’  In Iceland I was too traveled, on my travels too Icelandic. . . . Women told me I drank like a man, men like a slut.  In my flings I was deemed too keen; in my relationships too frigid.  I couldn’t fit in any damned where and was therefore always looking for the next party.  I was a relentless fugitive on the run.”  But it is her horrific experiences in war-ravaged Europe that result in trauma so profound that all her future relationships suffer.  Her explanation to her sons is not an understatement:  “’Tell them that their mother did her best, but my eighth life wouldn’t allow for . . . for more.’”  The title may refer to the temperature used by a crematorium to burn a human body, but it is also an apt metaphor for what Herra endures.

It is during the war that Herra learns about the extent of man’s inhumanity.  As Herra witnesses, women are certainly capable of brutal behaviour, but it is the treatment she receives from men that leaves her with little tolerance for members of the male sex.  She comes to agree with the observations of an acquaintance who advises her to beware of men because “’All men are Germans’” and to not become a woman because “’Women have such a rough time.  Just be a person.  Not a woman. . . . to be a woman is like being . . . it’s just a disease. . . . To be a woman is a disease.  A deadly disease.’”   She also comes to believe that virtually all women have been raped:  “No doubt Mom, Grandma, Great-Grandma, and all their foremothers had been raped . . . In farms, in barns, in ditches, on hills, on heaths, in bedrooms, in kitchens, in larders, at balls, in woods, on ships, in castles, cabins, gardens, and the Garden of Eden.”   Having been abandoned by one or both parents at different times, Herra didn’t have model parents but could her negligence of her sons be at least partially attributed to their gender?

The novel moves back and forth through time as befits the disjointed memories of an old woman, but this technique does present some challenges for the reader.  Of course, to maintain reader interest, the most shocking revelation is saved for the end.  At times, the book does drag.  There is considerable commentary about Icelanders and their culture; several times there is reference to the Icelandic tradition of silence:  “the tyranny of Mr. Silence, the despot who ruled Iceland in the twentieth century.”   Having only visited Iceland once and not being too familiar with Icelandic history, this pre-occupation with silence doesn’t mean much to me.

The touches of humour are wonderful.  Herra finds walking painful so describes her path to the toilet as her Via Dolorosa:  “My dream is to be hooked up to a catheter and a bedpan, but my application got stuck in the system.  There’s constipation everywhere.”  There is more than one example of satire in the author’s having the wife of an Icelandic car importer, a Mrs. Fortuneson, name an automobile a Chèvre au lait, “’making the American car maker sound like a fancy French hors d’oeuvre.”  The episode where Herra calls a crematorium to make an appointment for disposal of her body is hilarious. 

I’ve always enjoyed books where an elderly person examines his/her life, and this title will be added to my list of notable examples of this type.

Note:  I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

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