"Children in Reindeer Woods," the first of the Icelandic writer Kristin Omarsdottir's novels to be translated in to English, is an assured introduction to her work. In Lytton Smith's translation, the tone is placid throughout, the smooth skin which stirs usually slightly, for laughter's sake or to tremble in expectation of violence.
Sveinbjorg Bjarnadottir
Kristin Omarsdottir
CHILDREN IN REINDEER WOODS
By Kristin Omarsdottir
Translated by Lytton Smith
198 pp. Open Letter. Paper, $ 14.95.
The story takes place in an unnamed country, during the farmhouse which serves as the proxy home for children. When three armed soldiers unexpected appear, the adults in assign benefaction them with food as well as drink. The theatre would seem to be set for negotiation, appeasement, compliance, whatever transactions have been required in order to buy survival in the time of war. Instead, several murders have been committed in fast succession with no threats, no struggle, no rationale, just point-blank gunfire. "The chickens precipitate over to demeanour during the bodies." (Later on, the chickens will creep in to the house, drawn by the novelty of the previously forbidden domain. In fact, the chickens continue to take the detached, rarely critical seductiveness in all which happens.) One of the soldiers, Rafael, turns upon his comrades. He seems to have motionless to eliminate them since he wants to be the farmer. And so, two some-more murders later, the usually survivors have been Rafael as well as an 11-year-old lady declared Billie, who has been "spared, seemingly without the thought."
Billie knows which "children can be invisible. She had tested it time as well as again. Children have been some-more! mostly invisible than not." She hides under the bush, watching Rafael dig the grave as well as fill it with corpses. Once he's tidied up, she comes out of stealing as well as the two proceed to live together, not exactly as captor as well as prisoner of war, though the attribute sometimes resembles which as he commands her to fool around with her dolls as well as binds her during gunpoint when she gets up to fetch something.
At times, Billie as well as Rafael take upon the role of small sister as well as grudgingly doting large brother: he's responsible about her nutrition, runs her bath with "the pointing of an investigative publisher or the cocktail waiter the right amount of hot H2O with the right amount of cold water, given which the child's skin is supportive to both hot as well as cold." On other occasions, they flirt, as well as Billie dabbles in possessive bickering, especially when the traveling nun spends the night as well as stays up late talking to Rafael.
But this isn't the story of Billie's sexual awakening. Rafael has stumbled upon the small lady who's as alert as can be, the lady involved in multiple conversations with both the past as well as the present, the tangible as well as the imagined. Billie's toes contend "Hi" to her when she washes them; she's able to recount the difficult story of her parents' adore (a intrigue between the philosopher puppet as well as the tellurian woman); as well as she's well proficient with frustration, carrying succumbed to an unrequited passion for the single of the caretakers of the children's home, the late dancer who developed the revulsion for his discipline: "I dance exemplary ballet, which has the single purpose, to act like the vital waxwork for the dead culture, like talking Latin in to an answering appurtenance all day long."
These relations may receptive to advice hopelessly somber, though they're enacted with expansive theatricality as the characters examine the limits of identity, perplexing to mind the manners for being the ch! ild, the dancer, the husband, the wife. Omarsdottir's skills as the poet as well as playwright have been particularly evident in the demented as well as not often affecting soap-opera discourse Billie invents for her dolls, Sara as well as Ragga, their words echoing Billie's own doubts, their sobbing station in for the anguish Billie herself doesn't dare perform. "Sara: we had to host this party, my heavenly cinnamon bun, so which no the single would consider which I'm retarded. Sara whispers to Ragga: we am, we see, retarded. Ragga: Me too. Don't discuss it anyone."
At the farmhouse, normality is impeccably impersonated. Billie hears weary, anxious speak about the fight upon the radio, though there have been no details about the cause of the conflict she as well as Rafael have been vital through, no denote of when it began or when it competence end. It's as if everyone in the universe has been systematic to fool around during being under siege. When Rafael points the gun during Billie the single time as well many, she gets moody as well as stabs him in the chest. He doesn't take it personally. " Stab me where we want," he says. "She stuck the knife in his stomach. This man didn't bleed."
Rafael speaks bitterly of carrying been sneered during for receiving the sightseeing tour of the church whilst wearing his troops uniform, "as if soldiers can't be upon holiday." Yet he proves unqualified of abandoning violence. Whenever people arrive during the farm with some-more questions than he likes, he kills them, the response Billie as well as the chickens do not validate though renounce themselves to. Omarsdottir's tellurian characters have been reduction committed to the single another than they have been to the state of limbo they inhabit, as well as if the discourse between them becomes the small as well similar to the conversation Billie invents for her dolls, that's the bent this daringly droll, unconditionally perturbing book makes it easy to excuse.
Helen Oyeyemi's many recent novel is! "Mr. Fo x."
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