Hekla wants to be a writer, a poet, in the great Icelandic tradition she's grown up in. But there's a problem. It's 1963, and she's a woman--and this is not a time when the Icelandic literary establishment has much regard for female writers. Hekla leaves her rural farm home for Reykjavik, thinking she might have better luck there. She moves in with an old friend from her small town, Jon, a gay man who moved to the country's capitol city in hope of meeting others like him. Both of them need jobs, and they find them: Hekla as a server in a hotel restaurant where she is harassed and ogled, particularly by a man who's determined to get her to compete in the Miss Iceland pageant, and Jon on fishing boats where the work is horrendous and he is bullied and beaten up for being gay.
Hekla, at least, begins to thrive. She works during the day and writes at night. But a trip to the local library introduces her to a librarian poet, who takes a fancy to her, and soon they're living together. Hekla can't bring herself to tell him she too is a poet and writer, sneaking out to Jon's home to do her writing while the poet is hobnobbing with other (male) poets. Eventually something has to give.
That's the story at the heart of Miss Iceland. The title and cover might lead some to think this is a light, frothy story, but it's anything but. In fact, it's fair to say that it's a fairly sorrowful book, although the author's writing style is so spare that the reader doesn't drown in it. Jon's despair at being gay in a time and place that condemns it is heart-wrenching. He follows the news about Martin Luther King's work in the U.S., saying that if King can succeed in making Black people equal, maybe someday the same will be true for gays.
Hekla wants only to write, and to be taken seriously as a writer. She increasingly realizes that may never happen in her home country. Together, she and Jon figure out a path forward for each of them.
I really loved this book, except the ending was abrupt, and I wasn't entirely clear what it meant. But even saying that, it stayed with me for days, kept me thinking about the ending, wishing I knew more of Hekla's life beyond the book, and finally, I ended up requesting another book by the same author from the library. I suspect I will be looking for more work from her.
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