Sigrún Pálsdottír

Embroidery is a beautiful little book. Set in Iceland and the U.S. at the turn of the 20th Century, it tells the story of Sigurlina, a young woman, the daughter of the curator of a museum focused on early Icelandic history, who is bright, adventurous, knowledgeable—and stuck being housekeeper and amanuensis for her father while dreaming of something more.

The narrative moves back and forth in time in a way that seems designed to make readers feel a bit wrong-footed, but that doesn't make the act of reading unreasonably difficult. Aside from the central character, readers only see other characters partially: there's no attempt to present them in any way beyond their relevance in Sigurlina's life.

In some ways this book is almost as much prose-poem as novel. The language is beautiful, but hazy at times in that way that works for poetry. The author balances Sigurlina's lack of options and frustrations with a kind of gentleness. Readers meet a woman living in a very narrow world, but there is an expansive gentleness that surfaces regularly.

When you're looking for a book that's both thought-provoking and charming, that asks more and gives more than your typical mass-market book, Embroidery will serve your purposes nicely.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss the opinions are my own.… (más)

I found this novel on a list of recent English translations by women authors and I'm so glad I did. Pálsdóttir packs a lot into this brief novel about a young woman whose life unravels after finding that eight years of work towards a doctoral thesis seems to be founded on a mistake. The narrator (I don't recall ever learning her name) has been studying a diary from the 1600s, believed to be written by S.B., painter of a famous portrait. Little is known about this "S.B." until the narrator stumbles upon a diary entry that makes it seem the portraitist is a woman. She builds her thesis on this discovery and towards the end of writing her 600 pages she discovers that she missed an entry that was mistakenly labeled with the same date. This entry suggests to her that she was wrong and S.B. was actually a man, negating all of her work.

This discovery leads to a surrealist account of a descent into madness and despair. There are confused, dream-like episodes paired with moments of harsh reality.

This book won't be for everyone but I really loved it.… (más)