Independent People by Halldor Laxness

http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/f/fish-can-sing.shtml

I've finally returned to this. What an absolutely incredible book. It starts with difficulty but gets very, very good - I've become pretty addicted to my little sessions with it. I forgot to bring it onto the Tube with me this morning, which made me a little grumpy.

I'd say if you aren't locked in by page 90 or so, then give up. By page 90 I was in love with it.

It veers so skillfully between a kind of high poetic style and almost slapstick, Father Ted social observation. And the little gems of wisdom - inscrutable, paradoxical truths that are mentioned as asides, or in parentheses! Good god.

have been dying to read this ever since i learned of its existence.

dunno if this is a plus or a minus but franzen puts this book in his top ten novels of all time.

Just placed a hold at my local library, so I can give it a look-see.

It's so intimate that it's almost hard to imagine that anyone else could have ever read it but me.

just got my own copy! will report back.

just to balance out the positive mentions here, i thought that i should point out that this is a terrible chore of a book. the unsympathetic protagonist is so well realized that the book vividly brings to life the experience of spending weeks of your life with an utter asshole. i only read to the end because i thought the book was explicitly challenging me to put it down. two thumbs down.

Ha ha! I can see where you're coming from. Well, way to spoil it for everyone, I guess.

Iceland has produced its share of sagas with protagonists who are assholes, albeit fascinating assholes.

(I just couldn't resist tossiong in an "albeit" when the opportunity arose.)

Sorry Roberto, I was cranky.

As a Thomas Bernhard fan 4 life put me down for unsympathetic protagonists!!

I finished it now and I have to say I can sympathize a little more with Roberto. It is just so.... not exactly unremitting but there are no pulled punches AT ALL. And it's not just the protagonist who's an asshole. It's the whole world, somehow. It's still one of the greatest novels I've ever read. Up there with the absolute best.

Very close to the end now - it's such a good book. It's amazing how similar to recent boom/bust cycles it all feels. The last few pages with the strike and stuff have some brilliant bone-dry satire.

God, I absolutely loved this, and contrary to most people here found it a compulsive page turner. Read most of it in two days and couldn't scramble through it fast enough. Partly because I love intransigent bastards in fiction (see also Josiah Crawley from Trollope), but I found the writing beautiful and mind blowing. Objectively it is bleak and unremitting, but some writers and characters just hit the right spot for me - often very difficult, stubborn people up against the world. A book has rarely left me so spellbound.

every single person i know who has read this book has been like, fuck me this is good

I'd say if you aren't locked in by page 90 or so, then give up. By page 90 I was in love with it.

I was thinking this was ok-ish, sorta thinking of giving up and THEN its like a switch flicked in the round table discussion around Icelandic poetry (where Bjartus inflexibility in style is discussed, which of course maps onto his inflexibility in everything, his complete and total negation of anything that does not agree with him), and then ch11 ("September Night") where his wife...isn't going to take it anymore, to say the least. Its the build up of issues around her: the weather, the diet forced upon her, the life, the reflections of a life wasted and then the gradual brutalization by this man she is married to (the man who also feels cheated and ripped off by all around him).

Not sure I'm in love but I'll carry on.

It's grim out there in the Icelandic hinterland. The sheep simply insist on dying every time you turn around.