Independent People
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Average rating3.8
From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author: a magnificent novel that recalls Iceland's medieval epics and classics, set in the early twentieth century starring an ordinary sheep farmer and his heroic determination to achieve independence. • "A strange story, vibrant and alive…. There is a rare beauty in its telling." —Atlantic Monthly If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to free himself is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.
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0 released books#1-4 in Sjálfstætt fólk
Sjálfstætt fólk is a 0-book series first released in 1934 .
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Not bad, just very slow. The finale is not what I expected, but I guess it is what the main characters deserved. I really thought that at least Asta Sollilja would end up with a brighter future, but her fate is bleak and broke my heart. Bjartur - nothing really could redeem this man who puts his silly pride before the lives of others. I disliked him from the start. Putting his selfish and rude demeanor down to an intense desire to be independent just did not cut it for me. Humans are made to be social and to survive together - no man is an island. I suppose the point of the novel is to prove this, and it does that well. It is very difficult to write a loathesome character and still elicit some shred of empathy for him by the reader, but when his house was taken away I felt a twang of pity.
The depth and the complexity of the writing kept me reading, the emotional lives of the characters often striking a chord within me that made me feel seen by the author, even as someone from a vastly different place and time than the characters. There is something universal about the human experience that was captured by Laxness in the lives of these miserable sheep farmers.
Pride. Pride has been the topic of beautiful and deep conversations with friends, some still ongoing. It's a multifaceted word, hard to talk about because of its many meanings. It's also an important and necessary part of the balance we humans must keep.
Cruelty. Not a word I'd ever associated with pride, but now I may never be able to look at pride the same way. Some may see Independent People as a book about sheep, or perhaps the Icelandic ethos, or about struggle. I found heartbreak. Some parts hurt to read. Physically hurt. Gut level. And it kept hurting more.
Bjartur of Summerhouses wants to be independent. Own his land, be indebted to nobody, be strong. This need, this pride drives him to an isolation that is especially pathetic because he isn't even aware of it. Unseeing, he drives away love and hope and promise. The dumbstruck reader is with him every cruel step of the way. And perhaps, at the end, seeing independence in a different light.
