Atmospheric, disorienting…A dreamlike meditation on isolation and the bone-aching desire for companionship.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This story is like walking on a tightrope. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking, and it’s a page-turner.” —Authorlink
“Patience will be rewarded…unexpected connections, both literary and emotional.” —Booklist
“Gripping, often surprising…Eiríksdottír’s novel is both intelligent and affecting.” —Publishers Weekly
“Lyrical, wrenching, and arresting as a fist punch to the heart, this award winner from Icelandic author Eiríksdóttir unfolds the growing concern of Elín Jónsdóttir, a seventyish theater props designer, for troubled young playwright Ellen Álfsdóttir. At the same time, the slow revelation of a terrible incident in Elín’s youth explains her insular existence while building with thrillerlike intensity. North-star bright.” —Library Journal
“The rare opportunity to dwell in the mind of a troubled woman…a glimpse of tragedy, trauma, and forsakenness—drawing one closer even as it leaves one a little ill at ease.” —The Straits Times (Singapore)
“A Fist or a Heart is a riveting thriller about the twisty relationship between two women: Elín, a 70-something who lives a lonesome existence and is absorbed by her work making props and prosthetics for adaptations of Nordic crime novels; and Ellen, a young playwright and illegitimate daughter of a famous writer.” —Bustle
“A novel of isolation and secrets, the emotional resonance of A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you as you’re busy trying to figure out what’s lying underneath the solitary lives of these women.” —Three Percent
“Eiríksdóttir offers here a most elegant page-turner, one that disturbs and unsettles, making us question the way trauma casts a spell, the strength of certain secrets, and the innate motivation to find human connection.” —NYLON
“Award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist Kristín Eiríksdóttir has written a clever and many layered story of isolation, art, and memory…A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you.” —Book Riot
2019-07-06
In award-winning Icelandic novelist Eiríksdóttir's English-language debut, an older woman fixates on a young playwriting prodigy, and both women come to the realization that they are linked by shared trauma in their pasts.
Elín Jónsdóttir is a woman in her late 60s living alone in Reykjavík. She makes her living creating props—severed limbs and decaying corpses, especially—for the theater and Nordic crime films. Elín crosses paths with Ellen Álfsdóttir, the 19-year-old daughter of famed playwright Alfur Finnsson and author of a new play that's garnering a lot of buzz. This atmospheric, disorienting tale is narrated by Elín, who says "the reason I decided to write this is that if I don't, no one will," and that it's "an attempt to connect signs that were conveyed in waking life and in dreams." Elín, who had a difficult childhood, has spent her adulthood pushing others away. She claims that she "[can] see feigð, someone's death approaching." Long ago, she "accidentally got mixed up in the most salacious story of them all": one involving Ellen's philandering father, who was discovered dead halfway between his wife's house and that of his mistress—Ellen's mother. Elín's work in the theater brings her close to Ellen, and she spies on the young woman and her artist mother. "The people I wanted to get to know were far beyond my reach," Elín confesses, and the unexpected delivery of boxes full of memorabilia from her dead grandmother's house forces her to recall that she has obsessed over others before with traumatic and tragic results. As Ellen's play is produced and Elín circles closer to the girl, she finally acknowledges the spell she's under and that "trauma is, of course, nothing but an enchantment."
A dreamlike meditation on isolation and the bone-aching desire for companionship.