Booklist Review
With the 2008 recession limiting job possibilities in Reykjavik, police-college student Ari Thór Arason accepts a post in isolated northern Siglufjördur, even though it means leaving his live-in girlfriend, Kristen. The village, cut off from the rest of Iceland when snow blocks nearby mountain tunnels, is a former center of herring fishing where nothing ever happens, according to the police chief. But then things happen. First, Siglufjördur's most illustrious citizen, Hrolfur Kristjansson, whose one novel was an international best-seller decades earlier, dies in a fall at the local Dramatic Society; then the common-law wife of the lead actor is found stabbed and near death in the snow. Ari Thór pursues the Hrolfur case as a possible murder against orders, all the while feeling claustrophobic in the unrelenting snow and struggling with his relationship with Kristen and attraction to a local woman. In the first of his Dead Iceland series, Jønasson spins an involving tale of small-town police work that vividly captures the snowy setting that so affects the rookie cop. Icelandic noir at its moodiest.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ONGOINGNESS: The End of a Diary, by Sarah Manguso. (Graywolf, $14.) Out of a desire to record every detail of her life, Manguso, a poet, began keeping a journal over 25 years ago - and was so prolific that her entries reached about 800,000 words. In this slim volume, she reflects on the project and her efforts to guard against forgetting, death and "that great and ongoing blank." THE ARRANGEMENT, by Sarah Dunn. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.99.) Owen and Lucy have fled New York City for the Hudson Valley, settling in a 200-year-old house and stocking the coop with chickens. But paradise has its downsides, and the couple rock their upstate idyll by trying out an open marriage. What begins as an affair with a man in the city develops into love, and Lucy confronts an old question: whether passion or stability will win out. RUMI'S SECRET: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love, by Brad Gooch. (Harper Perennial, $17.99.) Few figures have had the same resonance and enduring popularity as Jalai al-Din Mohammad Rumi, the 13th-century Muslim mystic who has been a muse for everyone from Madonna to budding Pinterest spiritualists. Gooch investigates Rumi's life and theology, with a focus on his life-changing, and creatively rich, relationship with the mystic Shams. SNOWBLIND, by Ragnar Jonasson. Translated by Quentin Bates. (Minotaur/Thomas Dunne, $9.99.) It's 2008 and Ari Thor Árason, a recent police academy graduate in a remote Icelandic village, is investigating the death of a local author. "This classically crafted whodunit holds up nicely," our reviewer, Marilyn Stasio, wrote. "But Jonasson's true gift is for describing the daunting beauty of the fierce setting, lashed by blinding snowstorms that smother the village in 'a thick, white darkness' that is strangely comforting." I CONTAIN MULTITUDES: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) Yong, a British science journalist, investigates the vivid, all-encompassing realm of our microbiome - the essential microscopic organisms that help bolster our health and work in concert with our bodies to shape how they work. (By a recent estimate, only half the human body is made up of human cells.) A HORSE WALKS INTO A BAR, by David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen. (Vintage, $15.95.) In the basement of an Israeli comedy club, Dovaleh G's routine quickly veers into tales of his tormented childhood. Grossman's novel won the Man Booker International Prize in 2017. Our reviewer, Gary Shteyngart, called it a "magnificently comic and sucker-punchtragic excursion into brilliance."
Library Journal Review
[DEBUT]Ari Thór Arason, fresh out of the police academy, leaves behind his life and girlfriend in Reykjavik to take a posting in Siglufjördur, a quiet, economically depressed fishing village in northern Iceland. Already uncomfortable as an outsider in this close-knit community, Ari Thór begins to feel claustrophobic when the only tunnel into and out of town is blocked after a snowstorm. Just as the newly minted cop starts to question his decision to move to this remote place, a notable author and community luminary dies under suspicious circumstances at the local theater. The death is quickly ruled an accident, but Ari Thór can't seem to let it go. When a woman with ties to the theater is found fatally stabbed in her backyard, the police are forced to consider that their small town may have a murderer on the loose. As Ari Thór digs deeper into the town's past, it becomes apparent that Siglufjördur has more than its fair share of secrets and few of its residents are as they appear. Verdict In this debut novel, Jonasson has taken the locked-room mystery and transformed it into a dark tale of isolation and intrigue that will keep readers guessing until the final page. [See Prepub Alert, 7/16/16.]-Portia Kapraun, Delphi P.L., IN © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.