Book Review of The Last Toll Collector by S.S. Turner

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book stats:

335 pages, published November 2024 (I read as an advanced reading copy provided by the author in exchange for an honest review)

you may enjoy this book if you like:

Novels set in Iceland * Literary Fiction * Novels of Self-Discovery

travel inspiration:

After a short stint in San Francisco, California, and Reykjavik, Iceland, the majority of this novel is set in the remote Westfjords in Iceland. The Westfjords are some of the most isolated parts of a country not known for its bustling population. Case in point: fewer than 2% of the Icelandic population lives in the Westfjords.

Dustin and I visited Iceland in 2018 and spent ten days road tripping around the Ring Road. We fell in love with the country and promptly planned a return trip for the summer of 2020 to spend two weeks touring the Westfjords. Alas, our trip was thwarted by Covid and remains on hold since we are in an era of parenting our elderly dogs. So, reading this novel set in the Westfjords helped both fill the Icelandic void in our lives and left me hankering for a return trip.

about the author: S.S. Turner

The Last Toll Collector is S.S. Turner’s fourth novel, following on the heels of Secrets of a River Swimmer (2022), The Connection Game (2023), and Golden (2024). Turner has lived in London and Edinburgh and currently resides in Australia with his wife, children, and a menagerie of pets.

review of the last toll collector by s.s. Turner

Before her epic Icelandic journey begins, Valerie Tobruk is first a toll collector, a job that is often hidden in plain sight. While Valerie enjoys her short interactions with her customers and even forms relationships with her regulars, most just pass right through her booth and pay her no time of day. In this way, Valerie is both deeply part of the world and tucked away from it, a dichotomy that seems a perfect fit for her personality.

The modern world of automation eventually catches up with Valerie. Her job disappears, leaving her rudderless for a decade. She applies to various jobs but is unsuccessful. This finally comes to a head when a masochistic interviewer pits her against a robot. The job will be hers if she can out-perform the robot, which of course she cannot. Amidst this turmoil, one of Valerie’s former toll booth customers recommends she abscond to Iceland.

Thus begins the hero’s journey.

Valerie is an archetype for all of us. At the core of humanity, people want to both be valued by others and, in turn, provide value to society. With the loss of her employment, Valerie finds herself at a crossroad, unsure of where she fits. She doesn’t feel that others value her the way they once did, and she isn’t able to provide value to society through her work. Once in Iceland, Valerie heads to the isolated Westfjords in an attempt to find herself in its isolation. She finds herself at a historic, neglected herring factory. Based on my own travel plans to the area, I believe this setting is likely based on the real-life abandoned herring factory in Ingólfsfjörður (learn more about it here).

Without specific plans or much money, Valerie starts off camping out like a factory stowaway, hiding from tourists that stop at the site. In no time, she gravitates to what she knows. Valerie hangs up her shingle as a fee collector at the herring factory. It doesn’t occur to the initial visitors that anything is abnormal but locals quickly begin questioning why Valerie is collecting fees for tourists to enter a site that she doesn’t own and that used to be free. Soon, newspapers in Reykjavik are hawking the story of the woman who is squatting in the herring factory, which leads curiosity seekers to Valerie’s door. Valerie is going through the machinations of being valued (at least people are paying attention to her) and providing value to others (she begins sharing historic facts about the factory after picking them up from a tour guide). But she is behaving in a way that is outside of regular society and so she is constantly questioned by everyone. Confronted by this potential rejection, Valerie doubles down and declares herself a sovereign nation! In that one act, Valerie is reasserting her value and place in the world, albeit it in an unusual way.

This does not make her any less of a curiosity to gaping tourists but does set her down an unexpected path. She quickly establishes her nation as anti-ArtificiaI Intelligence (AI) and begins collecting all sorts of unique characters, who decide to join her in nation-building. Valerie’s eponymous nation goes through a fast-paced evolution of civilization - from building works to industry to militarism and warfare to, eventually, the development of currency, which quickly progresses to late-stage capitalism.

In the midst of this budding micro-empire, the citizens of Tobruk end up in a short-lived battle against the Icelandic authorities. Upon retreat of their enemy, the population waits for the next battle, which surprisingly never comes. But what does show up at the border is a series of off-shore drones and a unit of robots that are situated along the cliff that overlooks the settlement. For a nation founded on an anti-AI stance, these are poetic threats. The citizens aren’t sure what to make of these surprising developments and decide the drones and robots are pawns of the Icelandic authorities. Eventually, they reconsider what has brought the drones and robots to their border because neither is acting as if they are controlled by the government. Over time, the Tobrukians begin to consider that the AI are independent gods, who require worship.

It is at this moment that Valerie’s entire conflict comes to a head. Over the rapid rise and evolution of her nation, she has been usurped by several citizens and has faded from the country’s respected founder and leader into the background as a non-entity. But at the moment that matters, Valerie steps forward to confront the AI threats directly and finds herself confronting her own personal demons that stem back to her childhood with a father who saw no value in her as a person.

A combination of Lord of the Flies meets Life of PI meets the Simpson’s episode where Lisa creates an entire civilization in a petri dish, this is a riveting, modern take on the classic hero’s journey, first described by Joseph Conrad.

Valerie is an archetype for all of humanity, which sits on its own precipice of uncertainty. AI is progressing with the fits and starts that are a prelude to leaps in technology that will transform our existence in a way that we cannot fathom. All of us are - to some degree or other - unsure whether we will be needed and whether our unique contributions as individuals will even matter.

The Last Toll Collector is focused on our latest threat: AI. But AI is only the next in a long list of new technologies and changes to the human experience that echo back in time. This novel captures a quintessential worry of all humans during all times in history. We should not despair. The Last Toll Collector has a hopeful message for us all. Each of us has the power within ourselves to solve this. We must each take our own hero’s journey to emerge victorious.

This novel is riveting, smart, and thought-provoking and was a true page-turner, as I was curious to see where it would take me next! This was the first novel I read by the author, and I look forward to seeing what else he has in store!

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