Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen

Non so bene cosa dire di questo romanzo perché la verità è che non l’ho capito. La CE Iperborea si prodiga nello spiegarmi che è un romanzo sull’emigrazione e sulle sue conseguenze nelle generazioni successive degli emigrati, ma leggendo Isola non ho sentito questo tema come così centrale da far girare intorno a esso tutta la presentazione dell’opera.

Sì, si parla di emigrazione, ma sembra anche una saga familiare, un racconto autobiografico, una guida ai luoghi delle Fær Øer, un romanzo storico, una storia di amori travagliati, una storia di ritorno alle origini: insomma, un monte di roba che, però, alla fine, stringi, stringi, non mi ha lasciato niente.

Forse l’autrice, essendo al suo primo romanzo, non ha saputo gestire al meglio tutti i temi e i generi che avrebbero dovuto comporre il mosaico della storia di emigrati faroesi. La citazione, riportata anche in quarta di copertina e secondo la quale Laggiù, sotto il mare, tutte le terre emerse s’incontrano, è molto bella e ci racconta di differenze che si parlano, ma l’ho trovata fine a se stessa, appesa lì senza che il romanzo riuscisse a darle il giusto carico di significato.

Non so se consigliarne o meno la lettura, dipende dai vostri gusti: se come me non amate le storie piene di suggestioni, meglio se passate ad altro; se, invece, siete di quellə che leggono questi romanzi con sguardo sognante, allora Isola aspetta proprio voi.… (plus d'informations)

A tranquil, poetic and engaging read that warns about things to come and asks the reader to think about, or better yet: rethink our way of treating our planet.

Its concept is stunning in its originality: a conversation between two seas who are sisters: A, the Atlantic, old and wise, not that caring for the world anymore, and M, the Mediterranean, young and passionate. The latter feeling for Icarus who fell into her: "Icarus fell and I took him up. His wings tasted like honey. The boy itself tasted like enthusiasm and sadness, somewhat hasty, tail-wagging almost."

Different themes are explored here. The seas as the source of life, A. explaining to a child how all things alive belong to the sea.

(Wo)mankind’s (“the little creatures”) futility and its failure, A remembering evolution, how she sent organisms ashore. How they evolved, helped by M, and then degenerated and failed.

The refugee crisis: M (“laying humming for days on end in my sparkling dress”) telling about the sinking boats with too many “little creatures” on board. How she has to look away from it.

Pollution: "I am not myself anymore. Every day they fill me with mindless, unknown things, they put it in me.”

Climate change: "I feel bloated (…) The seasons are changing places"
The Atlantic dreams about the ever faster rising sea levels and of how in the end the earth will be like a mirrored globe when she will meet her sister M.

A and M have a plan to counter all that is happening to them and the planet, but what it is remains untold though hinted at.

One thing is clear: we are the little ones and we are insignificant to the seas who will be there long after us.

A beautiful little gem of a book that asks for a reread. More than one.… (plus d'informations)

A Danish author with Faroese roots takes her narrator (who shares her ancestry - it again becomes hard to separate an author from a narrator) to the island of her grandparents. The novel has two timelines that get weaved around each other - the grandparents leaving the islands for Denmark and the granddaughter coming back home after their deaths. The two stories meet in the narrator's memories so it really becomes a 3-timelines narrative, split between the two places and shifting between them and across the years. It is a tale of emigration and longing to belong, of assimilation and getting yourself lost and then finding yourself again. The Faroe Islands are where the family is; Denmark is where the future seems to be. There is something sad about that, something almost anyone who moved away from home will recognize. The novel is a meditation on the process of migration - stating occasionally facts that rarely get spoken about (like the three generation principle: the first generation moves, the second needs to succeed so they become doctors and lawyers and so on, the third is where people really have a choice to become artists and trombonists if they want to). There is a lot of history in this book, there are a lot of heartbreaks but there is also laughter (and a theory on why the Faroese football team (soccer for the Americans...) does not to very well when they are away from home).

If anything, the novel tends to be too busy in places - too many people, too many actions. But then... isn't this what happens when you go back home when you live abroad? The style can also be jarring in weird ways - it did not completely work for me but I appreciated the details of the islands.… (plus d'informations)