Friday, June 24, 2016

Iceland - Jim Krusoe





Finding an odd book is not that hard; many I have read are at least somewhat out of the ordinary. Much like the country is far away from pretty much everything else, the novel is nowhere approaching ordinary.


Iceland was published in 2002.  The protagonist, Paul, repairs typewriters.  While it isn't clear exactly when this novel takes place, other than it seems to be relatively modern day, which would make the typewriter repair business not a particularly lucrative one.  Paul, though, has more pressing concerns.  He needs an organ transplant (which organ is never made clear, nor what exactly is wrong with his), so he goes to an organ facility, in which available organs are kept floating in a swimming pool.  The organ caretaker, Emily, swims in the pool to keep the organs functional.


It will get even more weird from here.


Paul and Emily end up having sex on the diving board (and apparently elsewhere around the pool, although this only becomes apparent in later sections of the novel).  Unfortunately, Paul, now in love with Emily,  loses contact with her and ends up on an adventure that will take him to Iceland, see him lose a family in a volcano, spend time in prison and a piano bar, and a lot else, in what is a pretty slim novel.


Krusoe spends little time with what we would normally consider the big events in life; they don't seem to interest him as much as the details.  Paul is mostly a passenger in his life, but he does have desires, and in his own way, finds a path to them, even if it takes him years.  This is kind of comic, alt-universe Murakami - weird stuff happens that no one seems to notice is weird, and its never very clear where things are headed, but eventually it gets there. 

No comments:

Post a Comment