Children in Reindeer Woods / Kristín Ómarsdóttir ; translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith

This book is part of the Open Letter Initiative from the University of Rochester, an effort to translate world literature into English and expose it to a wider audience and foster a deeper appreciation for international literature.

Billie is an eleven-year-old girl living at a country home for children in need. The nation is unnamed, but it seems to resemble Norway a lot. Anyway, the time is some point in the future and there is some unexplained armed conflict consuming the nation. Even the isolated country home at Reindeer Woods is not immune from the violence, and Billie’s life is changed forever when soldiers arrive at the home and kill all but her. It’s not clear why she was spared. Is Billie a bit “retarded” as she herself sometimes wonders, or was her survival a fluke?

Billie does seem, somewhat uncharacteristically for a child, to be a bit numb to the violence that she is confronted with when one of the soldiers continues the killing by topping off his comrades and deciding to take on the role of farmer at the home in Reindeer Woods. When visitors arrive and begin to ask too many difficult questions, they seem to join the ranks of the dead (though the reader is not always sure). Billie observes all this with the insouciance of a barnyard chicken, with whom she seems to share certain traits (and whose coop she frequently repairs to). Her pretend play with her Barbies and the fantastical story of her parents that is revealed as the book progresses give this novel an air of magical realism.

Children in Reindeer Woods is hard to classify. It’s more than a little quirky, it’s a little Kurt Vonnegut-esque, and sometimes reads like a dark fairy tale. All the same, I liked it, and may look for more books in translation from the Open Letter Initiative.

12/27 On further reflection it occurred to me that the title is Children in Reindeer Woods, with emphasis on the plural form of child. Technically, since Billie is the only surviving child, it's clear that Rafael (the soldier) is included in that collective noun. He clearly is playing soldier and his interactions / relationship with Billie seem to take on overtones of child's make-pretend play. And his desire to play farmer seems to be a childlike role-play. A child soldier makes himself right at home at the home for needy children. (The original title in Icelandic is Hér, which simply means "here"-- so much for literary interpretation!)

Comments

Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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