Book Review of Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

A view of Reykjavik, the setting for this novel

[Disclosure: This review includes affiliate links. Purchases made through the link provide a small commission to us at no cost to you.]

(click the image above to purchase this book through Amazon)

Published December 2022 (I received the book as an Advanced Reading Copy through NetGalley)

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

literary fiction * modern Icelandic literature

TRAVEL INSPIRATION:

The novel is set in Iceland, predominantly in the capital city of Reykjavik, though there are general references to travel around the country. Because the novel is set in the winter, the days are short, the wind storms (potentially) severe, and it is more the light and the weather of Reykjavik that features rather than anything else Icelandic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Born and raised in Iceland, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir currently resides in Reykjavík where she is an assistant professor of art history at the University of Iceland. She lived in Paris while obtaining her art history degree from Sorbonne. At present, Auður has written 7 novels. Animal Life is her latest. She has received several literary awards for her novels and is also a playwright and poet.

I previously read and reviewed Ólafsdóttir’s Butterflies in November (read that review here), The Greenhouse (read here), Hotel Silence (read here), and Miss Iceland (read here). It is rare for me to read so much in such short order by the same author, but there is something that appeals to me about Ólafsdóttir’s stories - her playful writing style while still tackling tough issues. Prior to this latest novel, the consistent trend to her novels seemed to be characters at a crossroads in their lives taking a journey as part of the path forward. The latest novel is more of a journey through time, while the main character is mostly stuck in Reykjavik in the winter.

Note: because the Icelandic tradition is to use patronyms instead of family names (i.e., Ólafsdóttir literally means ‘Olaf’s daughter’), it is appropriate to refer to Auður by her first name. On pronunciation: the letter ‘ð’ (capitalized Ð) is pronounced like a ‘th’ sound so her name approximates to oi-th-ur. The letter is called ‘eth’ (just like the letter b would be bee).

REVIEW OF Animal Life BY Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

For some reason, a few of my recent reads have featured midwives, and Animal Life fits the pattern. Dómhildur is a midwife in a Reykjavik hospital and comes from a long lines of midwives in her family. Closest to her, perhaps, was her childless great-aunt, now deceased but previously a midwife, whose mantle has settled on her shoulders.

In more than one way, really. Dómhildur lives in her great-aunt’s former apartment, which is filled with furniture and furnishings that are decades out-of-style. The electrical lighting is sketchy with several lights refusing to function. Her apartment sounds disjointed and cluttered.

In early winter, she is spending time delivering babies at the hospital and contending with phone calls from her meteorologist sister, who is myopically focused on an incoming winter storm. An apartment upstairs is used as a rental for tourists, and she has several interactions with the Australian, who is desperately trying to see some of the country during the limited daylight hours.

Dómhildur is focused on each family that crosses her path as she delivers their baby, and the novel veers in to the surrounding issues such as post-partum depression and stillbirths. She even comes across the couples who have their own odd focuses during such a key time, like the couple who wished their baby to be born on a certain date to match another family member’s birthday; instead, since that didn’t happen, the father tries to coerce Dómhildur into marking down the birth time to reflect the same number.

Set against this back-drop, Dómhildur has been piecing together the writings, the semi-novels or musings, of her deceased great-aunt. At the end of her great-aunt’s life, she asked Dómhildur to watch after a box in her apartment, which turned out to be filled with an unknown number of novels, some pen pal letters to a friend, and a rejection letter from a publisher. Dómhildur sets out to make order out of chaos and piece together the novel (or novels) as intended, but she constantly runs up against sections that are in an unclear order, references in her letters to a pen pal that throw the timing of other pages into disarray, and the like.

Much of her great-aunt’s writings are musings on life and death, light and darkness, and in a country that knows both extreme light and dark with seasonal shifts, how could those not be ever-present?

While I overall enjoyed the novel, it was not as gratifying as the author’s prior novels that I have read. The section on the great-aunt’s writings was quite disjointed, which was purposeful, but didn’t click for me quite as much as similar approaches have taken in earlier novels. The topic of midwifery and childbirth featured prominently and isn’t an area that particularly appeals to me. I felt the novel was missing some of the self-effacing humor and irony that I enjoyed in the other novels; however, Animal Life does carry through similar musings and oddities of character that make the author a great storyteller.

All-in-all, I would recommend this novel to others but not with the same level of excitement I had for her prior novels. I very much look forward to and hope for another novel by this author in the years ahead!

Click the image below to save this review to Pinterest for later!