clarkness's review against another edition
4.0
I was attracted to this book's cover art a long while back and had been meaning to read it since then. Glad that I finally did. I expected this novel to focus on the increasingly popular theme of generational malaise related to peaking too early, but I was surprised to find a story that was mostly about the richness of literature itself. Nothing overly serious, but it was a fun noir about a grown up Nancy Drew-esque character trying not to get embroiled in the murder of her best friend. Also, Iceland.
There's a secret society of underground native Icelanders, some metaphysical detectives, some regular detectives, and a strong artisanal beer community. And a dachshund!
There's a secret society of underground native Icelanders, some metaphysical detectives, some regular detectives, and a strong artisanal beer community. And a dachshund!
ohhkatrina's review against another edition
1.0
I didn't finish this but it was way too weird. I only got it because of the title, I didn't realize it was published by McSweeney's but it was just trying too hard.
randrenfrow's review against another edition
3.0
I think this book tries to be an interesting homage to classic mystery stories, like Sherlock Holmes, or even Hardy Boys (you'd understand if you read it), but it sort teeters between being a full-fledged homage and it's own thing entirely. I applaud Dustin Long for his interesting ideas and devices, and it was an exciting story, but left something to be desired literarily.
larsinio's review against another edition
3.0
Icelander is an interesting book that think its a lot clever than it winds up being.
This is a novel for writers, which i guess makes sense since its on Dave Eggar's. There are winks at the reader throughout - from story driver "Shirley MacGuffin" (funny the first time, ugh by the 500th time) to the unreliable narrators, to the unreliable "editor", to the unrealiable "author". These are all "clever" machiniations that any writer would enjoy, in theory.
For the first third of hte book, when Our Heroine is the the sole narrator, this works well. I liked hte ideas of person involved in real-life mysteries then subject to mystery novels hating her own fame. I liked the two literary investigators. I liked the plot about the origins of Macbeth. I liked the bookish plot, the bookish characters, 5 stars at this point.
Then it becomes a mess in the middle. Multiple voices, multiple timelines, it just loses its cohesion. The sum of the parts in the middle is less than the whole. Not much plot actual advance,s but just a lot of scattered background.
This goes on for a while and then act III kicks in when ALL THE PLOT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY. Too much action, too late, with no real pay off. You dont really care about the characters because after switching narrator so many times in the middle, it just becomes a tastesless blur. Characters utlimtaely have no arc - its just to a race to reveal the "mystery" sorta. And then the book ends with the editor clashing with the author clashing with the content of the story, so nothing really conclusive can be said. uh ok? its "clever" i guess.
Other tidbits:
The dramatis personae was needed but it forgets to include like half the characters.
I like the idea of this book and its play on conventions, but i feel someone else could have done a better job.
For a book about Iceland there is almost 0 here about iceland. Id expect every character to have an icelandic name. The icelandic setting never really comes into play other than steam tunnels - which isnt unique to iceland. It should be called Nordicer because its a non-researched mishmash of Scandinavia.
Finally - this is an interesting book that i think should be read in a class about writing plots, as a way to give you ideas about turning conventions on its head. But way too ambitious for Dustin Long to handle
This is a novel for writers, which i guess makes sense since its on Dave Eggar's. There are winks at the reader throughout - from story driver "Shirley MacGuffin" (funny the first time, ugh by the 500th time) to the unreliable narrators, to the unreliable "editor", to the unrealiable "author". These are all "clever" machiniations that any writer would enjoy, in theory.
For the first third of hte book, when Our Heroine is the the sole narrator, this works well. I liked hte ideas of person involved in real-life mysteries then subject to mystery novels hating her own fame. I liked the two literary investigators. I liked the plot about the origins of Macbeth. I liked the bookish plot, the bookish characters, 5 stars at this point.
Then it becomes a mess in the middle. Multiple voices, multiple timelines, it just loses its cohesion. The sum of the parts in the middle is less than the whole. Not much plot actual advance,s but just a lot of scattered background.
This goes on for a while and then act III kicks in when ALL THE PLOT HAPPENS IMMEDIATELY. Too much action, too late, with no real pay off. You dont really care about the characters because after switching narrator so many times in the middle, it just becomes a tastesless blur. Characters utlimtaely have no arc - its just to a race to reveal the "mystery" sorta. And then the book ends with the editor clashing with the author clashing with the content of the story, so nothing really conclusive can be said. uh ok? its "clever" i guess.
Other tidbits:
The dramatis personae was needed but it forgets to include like half the characters.
I like the idea of this book and its play on conventions, but i feel someone else could have done a better job.
For a book about Iceland there is almost 0 here about iceland. Id expect every character to have an icelandic name. The icelandic setting never really comes into play other than steam tunnels - which isnt unique to iceland. It should be called Nordicer because its a non-researched mishmash of Scandinavia.
Finally - this is an interesting book that i think should be read in a class about writing plots, as a way to give you ideas about turning conventions on its head. But way too ambitious for Dustin Long to handle
librarianguish's review against another edition
3.0
Hmmmm. Quirky, yet this just didn't quite succeed at what it was trying to do. Oh well.
wilsonthomasjoseph's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book that demands a rescanning. Awesome post-modern mystery!
carmenghia's review against another edition
2.0
Icelander is my first foray into the McSweeney's publishing world, which has often been recommended to me, and into which I have only dipped my toes into it's short fiction and online presence. This book was an absolute mess. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - the plot was loose and non-engaging and it was hard to give a shit about any of the characters. The style of humor that the author was trying to execute fell quite short of its goal. However, despite my damning review, I could see talent in the author's words, but he clearly needs to hone his craft. If Dustin Long manages to get further books published, I might be curious to see where he is at two or three tales down the line.
calabrag's review against another edition
3.0
I could have given this book a solid 4/4.5 stars id it weren't for the extensive borrowing from the Amelia Peabody books. I thought this story was very interesting and the structure of the narrative was very clever, but I can't understand the author's purpose in using Elizabeth Peters' characters, structure, and premise. Was he trying to make some statement about the books? Trying to imagine where life might have gone for these characters after the existing installments (if that's the case, it's very distressing since Amelia's analog is dead, Emerson's is senile, and Nefret's turns on the Ramses character and goes back to her oasis civilization)? Or maybe he just loved the characters so much that he wanted to use them (which makes this seem like glorified fan-fiction)? Dustin Long mentions in this interview that he wanted Ymirson's name "to have certain resonances," mentioning Radcliffe Emerson specifically, but also that he's "trying to avoid being derivative even in a self-conscious way." I don't see how you can end up with a product that uses so much of another series and pass it off as just one of myriad influences on your text. I also find it a little suspicious that the jacket description openly compares Icelander to several other authors/works (Agatha Christie, Nabokov, The Crying of Lot 49, The Third Policeman, The Da Vinci Code) but avoids any mention of Elizabeth Peters when the similarities are so blatant.
rubeusbeaky's review against another edition
3.0
What did I just read? XD
This book has largely gotten reviews as a comedic parody-mystery with some fantasy adventure thrown in. The cover would seem to suggest that a big, fantastical event is going to occur. The blurb which called this debut "Lemony Snicket for adults" was the whole reason I bought it, as I adore Mr. Snicket's absurdism, rewards for diligent readers, fourth-wall-breaking and philosophical commentary.
This book /has/ those elements... and yet it is /none/ of those things.
The parody of a mystery, where Our Heroine doesn't want to investigate the mystery, and a string of characters - including her - end up investigating her non-investigation as if it were the answer to the central mystery... is /cute/. It's a /cute/ joke, it got a chuckle. But after a couple hundred pages, you realize the various characters are going around in circles chasing nothing, and /you/ are being led to nothing, which is boring. If you're waiting for a break in the parody to provide conflict-resolution for the central mystery, you won't get it.
This story takes place in an alternate modern era, where Vikings were the primary colonial force and cultural influencer, and Norse mythology has some scraps of truth. There is a whole underground society, with a martial arts system inspired by the stealth of the arctic fox, its movements akin to ninjitsu. You would think the cultural differences of this alternate reality, and its clash with fox ninjas, would be plenty of meat for a story! Alas, these cool concepts are mostly background fodder. The big clash between surface and below is just a metaphor summed up in an afterword.
What, then, is this book? A mystery which doesn't resolve, a comedy which isn't that funny, an adventure which doesn't take action... In the end, what's left is all meta-commentary about the importance of perception and writing. It is the story of how we all have multiple biographies: What we know of ourselves, what we show of ourselves, and what other people interpret of us. The themes are reinforced by having multiple, fictional authors and investigators attempting to write about people or interpret the writings /of/ people. It's all very dizzying. There are brilliant insights into both writing and the human condition. But Writers Writing About Writing is SO pretentious. The fact that the central murder mystery is related to the cultural significance of writing is just... so... self-congratulatory. And I don't think this book did enough /else/ to merit its arrogance.
Finally, this book seemed to want to be an experiment in "feminine storytelling". The murder victim, Shirley, describes at one point how Western storytelling is masculine: It builds to a climax then ends. She imagined a feminine story structure: secretive, meandering, as much about what was withheld as what was obvious, leading to tiny, building rewards along its various subplots, until climaxing at perhaps multiple points, and then having a long denouement to resolve everything. After reading her description, and putting it together with the author's choice to name various characters after sexual acts, I thought maybe he was tipping his hand and telling readers to read this book from a feminine sexual-lens... OR, that the author was laughing at us for trying to read TOO much into the book, and hitting investigative readers with a giant sex joke for all of their sleuthing. If a meta book about being an observant reader doesn't /reward/ its readers, then is the whole point a satire? A big middle finger for reading at all? That's cruel. And if the book is just a sex joke, it went over my head, and was in poor taste, since the context holding the joke is a woman grieving her dead mother, dead friend, and estranged husband. AND if the book is trying to be a revolutionary, feminine story structure, I - a woman - have a problem with its lack of climax, heavily dissatisfying.
It's rare that I can't tell if a book is too smart for me, or too dumb. But either way, much as I appreciated the concept and metaphors, those mechanics are not /enough/ to carry a book. A good mental exercise. A lousy story.
This book has largely gotten reviews as a comedic parody-mystery with some fantasy adventure thrown in. The cover would seem to suggest that a big, fantastical event is going to occur. The blurb which called this debut "Lemony Snicket for adults" was the whole reason I bought it, as I adore Mr. Snicket's absurdism, rewards for diligent readers, fourth-wall-breaking and philosophical commentary.
This book /has/ those elements... and yet it is /none/ of those things.
The parody of a mystery, where Our Heroine doesn't want to investigate the mystery, and a string of characters - including her - end up investigating her non-investigation as if it were the answer to the central mystery... is /cute/. It's a /cute/ joke, it got a chuckle. But after a couple hundred pages, you realize the various characters are going around in circles chasing nothing, and /you/ are being led to nothing, which is boring. If you're waiting for a break in the parody to provide conflict-resolution for the central mystery, you won't get it.
This story takes place in an alternate modern era, where Vikings were the primary colonial force and cultural influencer, and Norse mythology has some scraps of truth. There is a whole underground society, with a martial arts system inspired by the stealth of the arctic fox, its movements akin to ninjitsu. You would think the cultural differences of this alternate reality, and its clash with fox ninjas, would be plenty of meat for a story! Alas, these cool concepts are mostly background fodder. The big clash between surface and below is just a metaphor summed up in an afterword.
What, then, is this book? A mystery which doesn't resolve, a comedy which isn't that funny, an adventure which doesn't take action... In the end, what's left is all meta-commentary about the importance of perception and writing. It is the story of how we all have multiple biographies: What we know of ourselves, what we show of ourselves, and what other people interpret of us. The themes are reinforced by having multiple, fictional authors and investigators attempting to write about people or interpret the writings /of/ people. It's all very dizzying. There are brilliant insights into both writing and the human condition. But Writers Writing About Writing is SO pretentious. The fact that the central murder mystery is related to the cultural significance of writing is just... so... self-congratulatory. And I don't think this book did enough /else/ to merit its arrogance.
Finally, this book seemed to want to be an experiment in "feminine storytelling". The murder victim, Shirley, describes at one point how Western storytelling is masculine: It builds to a climax then ends. She imagined a feminine story structure: secretive, meandering, as much about what was withheld as what was obvious, leading to tiny, building rewards along its various subplots, until climaxing at perhaps multiple points, and then having a long denouement to resolve everything. After reading her description, and putting it together with the author's choice to name various characters after sexual acts, I thought maybe he was tipping his hand and telling readers to read this book from a feminine sexual-lens... OR, that the author was laughing at us for trying to read TOO much into the book, and hitting investigative readers with a giant sex joke for all of their sleuthing. If a meta book about being an observant reader doesn't /reward/ its readers, then is the whole point a satire? A big middle finger for reading at all? That's cruel. And if the book is just a sex joke, it went over my head, and was in poor taste, since the context holding the joke is a woman grieving her dead mother, dead friend, and estranged husband. AND if the book is trying to be a revolutionary, feminine story structure, I - a woman - have a problem with its lack of climax, heavily dissatisfying.
It's rare that I can't tell if a book is too smart for me, or too dumb. But either way, much as I appreciated the concept and metaphors, those mechanics are not /enough/ to carry a book. A good mental exercise. A lousy story.