Independent People, Halldór Laxness
Picking up this book, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I’d read Eugenes review and decided that it was something I should, if nothing else, read. The book is often described as “emotionally draining” and “painful”, yet, it is a beautiful book. There are a few reasons it has taken me a while to read it, most of these reasons aren’t tied to the book itself, but even outside of that, the book practically begs for patience. Its painful grip on the human soul begs for the reading to be portioned out in small doses.
It is a testament to the skill of Laxness that one would read this book to begin with. The content is bleak, harrowing, painful and worse. On every page you’ll find human life on the brink, or passing the brink itself. Yet the language, oh the language. Laxness is a poet of the olden days. A man who writes lyrically without using language as most people think of it, Laxness molds language to do his bidding. “Independent People” is astounding. Everything is rich and vivid, be it death stalking the land or the first rays of light on a summer field in the morning.
One can talk about the story, Bjarturs longing, his fight for independence, his lost love for his bastard daughter. It’s painful. It tears you to bits. There is a sadness in the independence that juxtaposes the heroic efforts taken by Bjartur. As the book moves you onwards, there is no reprieve, there are no sudden revelations. The epilogue is daunting and there is a sense of pain and fear for each page, each paragraph, each sentence, and even joy is bittersweet.
“Independent People” is the kind of work one should have read. It peers into the soul of man and paints a mosaic from what it finds. And we’re all richer for it, even if we’re left crying.