The Blue Fox: A Novel
In January 1883 in Iceland, “Everything . . . is blue.” Rural pastor Baldur Skuggason hunts a fox for its pelt, which he will sell to supplement his meager income. The herbalist Fridrik B. Fridjonsson is completing a hoax on Baldur that has allowed him, Herb-Fridrik, to bury his longtime assistant, who had Down syndrome, with more reverence than the grumpy, prejudiced minister ever could show. A flashback showing how Herb-Fridrik met his helper completes the action of this short novel by poet and pop-music lyricist (most famously for Iceland’s international star, Björk) Sjón. The tale is tinged by metamorphoses, however, of animal into human and vice versa, and it is written primarily in the spare, concrete diction of nature poetry—indeed, its opening section looks like a sequence of prose poems. Leavened by dry rural humor in the characters’ speech and thoughts, it is magnetically readable. See also The Whispering Muse. --Ray Olson