A tale of two lonely women- Ellen and Elin. I like Icelandic literature which is, indeed, unique so I'm gonna be the outlier. It might take a bit of patience but it's short and different from the trope I expected.

I work with Old Norse literature on a daily basis, which means I'm weirdly familiar with Iceland, just not the Iceland of today. In order to get to know the country a little better I wanted to read some of its modern literature as well, which brought me to A Fist or a Heart. Thanks to AmazonCrossing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My sincere apologies for the delay in reviewing!

I am fascinated by novels in which age and youth meet. In A Fist or a Heart, Elín and Ellen are clearly set up as two sides of a coin, or rather perhaps to halves of a whole. Even their names link them and throughout the novel we learn of more and more points on which the two and their life experiences match. Where Elín is looking back, giving the reader insight into how she was shaped by her experiences but how she also shapes her own life by very strict ideas, Ellen is at the very beginning of life and is still figuring out which outside forces are shaping her. In contrasting the two, Eiríksdóttir attempts to speak to larger truths about humanity but also about women. No one can escape the influence of others on them, no one can help but be shaped by their environment. This is true for all the characters in A Fist or a Heart, but it seems to echo extra strongly for these two women. On the one hand they feel like uprooted women, hardly connected to reality or everyday life. On the other hand, they are marked, time and time again, by the choices and acts of others which express themselves through different kinds of psychological and emotional violence. I find it hard to put into words what the impact of this was on me as a reader, but A Fist or a Heart has definitely left its own kind of mark.

Elín is in her seventies and, as she works away on props and prostethics, she contemplates her life. The impetus for this comtemplation is her encounter with a young woman, Ellen, daughter of a famous author and author herself of a new play for which Elín is making a prop. The two women's lives swirl around each other, creating something of a vortex of trauma, insight, pain, creation, and more. The novel is technically told through Elín's perspective, who tells us from the beginning that she isn't the most reliable narrator and that she doesn't quite know how to formulate this story. Her chapters are written in first person and these really bring her struggles to the fore. We also get a deep insight into Ellen as well through the third person, but I always questioned these chapters as I felt Elín's presence throughout them. A Fist or a Heart is not an easy read by any standard. Both Elín and Ellen have deeply difficult lives, marked by longing and abandonment, difficult relationships to fathers and mothers, and a tenuous grasp on reality. Some elements of the novel are quite hard to read, in what they hint at or actively explore, but because of this one does really get the feeling that something is being excavated. The ending feels tragic and a lot of difficult scenes occur throughout the book, but the reading experience felt weirdly affirming to me.

This is my first novel by Kristín Eiríksdóttir but I am captivated by her writing style. This novel won various prices in Iceland and I'm not surprised. It is the first of her works to be translated into English and I do really hope it finds a wide audience, even if it is not a super approachable read. Like I mentioned above, the themes the novel works with are far from easy. The writing itself is utterly alive though and it can't help but draw the reader right into the maelstrom of Elín's and Ellen's lives. Especially towards the end of the novel, where age catches up with Elín and her grip on reality begins to fade, the writing captures her confusion and fear so vividly that I was utterly gripped. While the English title, A Fist or a Heart, comes from a part of the book that I loved, I am also intrigued by the novel's Icelandic title: Elín, ýmislegt" (Elín, miscellaneous). Elín has boxes lying around from her childhood, one of which contains "miscellaneous" things, apparently. It is a great title because it fits to how for both women their lives are this assortment of things they don't quite know what to do with. They are affected by it, but have no place for it. I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time and I hope that either my Icelandic gets good enough to read her novels in the original, or that more of her works will be translated. Larissa Kyzer's translation is excellent and the vividness of Eiríksdóttir's writing is brought across really well by her.

A Fist or a Heart is a lyrical, direct, and sometimes mildly confusing novel which is gripping in its details and its themes.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of this. Not sure if it’s because it’s a translation or if it just went over my head, but it all felt so confusing. There was some beautiful language but it’s not something I would recommend to other readers because it felt too abstract to me.

This is very well written short novel - from a technical point. The authoress CAN write and she is quite good in setting and presenting the world of her story, which is a psychological study of two lonely females, 60-ish Elín and teenager Ellen, who both have some reasons for their loneliness and eccentricity.
Yet, the novel is hard to read - or better said, the characters are hard to relate to and to connect with them emotionally (at least for me). The tone is noir (with a dash of un-reality) and the feel is dark. I am missing warmth in all the coldness and the difficult lives of the protagonists. So while I applaud the good writing skills, I also prefer novels in where I can gain some strength to go by or at least some joy.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I love experiencing different cultures through the translated work of native authors, but…it may be that the Scandinavian mind is not one I understand. A Fist or a Heart is about an older woman with a secret, a 19-year-old playwright and that’s as far as I got before I gave up. I couldn’t find anything to hold onto.

I think I was swayed by all the prize winning references into thinking that this might be a good read for me, and because I jumped at the chance to read a women writer from Iceland, however I wasn't really drawn into the story and I found there to be too much of a disconnect between the main two characters that left me wondering what it was all about. (Beyond the obvious, a young woman writes a play, the prop maker becomes a little obsessed with her, the mother of the young woman is mentally unwell, thus their roles are reversed).

I was interested in the relationship between the young playwright and her mother, although unsure why the story is narrated from the point of view of the props maker. This novel made me think I missed something and left me not really wishing to think too hard to find out what it was I'd missed.

And that sad, shocking, unexpected ending.

I must admit that it took me a while to read this novel, there were parts I almost didn't like and couldn't connect, but overall it was a good reading experience.

The storyline is not linear, it jumps from past to present, and from one character to another, so you'll need some time to connect all the pieces. But when you begin to connect the stories, it becomes interesting.

Thank you to AmazonCrossing and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I did not enjoy this book. Having spent lots of time trying to work out what the plot is, putting it down in frustration and coming back to it - I finally just gave up and read through to be done with it. Although parts of it were beautifully written, they were also parts that were difficult to read because they described painful feelings and destructive behaviors.

All in all, I found it very inconsistent and finished it feeling too stupid to understand the deeper significance.

I was really intrigued by the premise of this story, unfortunately I couldn't really connect with it very well. It is well written and plotted, but the characters felt distant to me and I just didn't feel very absorbed by it. I do think this could appeal to big fans of Scandi noir, it just wasn't for me.

I enjoyed this book. For me personally, I was hooked by the ties to the theater and stage work, as that is as world in which I am deeply entrenched. Because of that connection, I think I probably got something more out of this book at the beginning than someone without those ties. However, that was not what kept me intrigued. I found the characters of Ellen and Élin to be fascinating. I devoured the parts of the story where they were both present, trying to piece together how they were tied to each other. There were parts of the story where it was hard to tell which character was speaking, but I think that was in many ways a benefit. The two women were the same in many ways and seeing how they fit into their worlds and having to figure out occasionally who was speaking only made this connection stronger. This is a book that I feel like I could still unpack more from on a second or even a third reading. It is a novel where it feels like everything and nothing happen all at once, and I look forward to reading it again.

This is an intriguing book from an Icelandic author that is full of atmosphere and a sense of the isolation of the country in parts. Overall, I have been interested in the culture of Iceland after having an Icelandic student as part of our local community and staying in contact with her. I find the culture quite unique, compared to traditional western cultures, even the naming of children. This book was a tough read, due mostly to the difficulty in following narrators and finding the plot. Some of the subject matter was quite intense and difficult to handle. Overall, I found the author's use of the voices in this book to be well done. This was not an easy read though.

#AFistoraHeart #NetGalley #AmazonCrossing

Interesting, to say the least. Some parts were quite eloquent, noteworthy, profound. But almost half of the time I was left sorting out each chapter who the speaker was, what timeframe, and what was going on. Seemingly random at times, but somehow captivating in some of those times too.

This novel is an insightful psychological study of two lonely and eccentric individuals with a tenuous grip on their sanity. The protagonist and narrator Elín Jónsdóttir, is a theatre and movie prop creator in her late sixties. One of the latest projects in which Elín is involved is the production of a new play by a teenage writing prodigy - Ellen Álfsdóttir. Ellen happens to be the daughter of a famed playwright with whom Elín was acquainted. Elín, who has spent all her life pushing people away from her, now seems strangely drawn to the disturbed teenager and starts following her. The narrative is purportedly written by the older woman, and it alternates between her reminiscences, written in the first person, and scenes involving Ellen, written in the third person and incorporating poems Ellen wrote.

The scant plot details of A Fist or A Heart (such as they are) are revealed slowly and tantalisingly. In this respect, I found the novel gripping and atmospheric. On the other hand, I cannot say I “loved” the book. My reservations were two.

The novel is built on a premise of ambiguity. It is quite clear, that Elín and Ellen are meant to be reflections of each other. Both are lonely, both had an upbringing with an ‘absent’ father, both had problematic relationships with their respective mothers. In a way, Ellen’s mother Lilya could be read as yet another aspect of one composite character. By the end of the book, however, the ambiguity is taken to extremes. As Elín becomes more and more confused, it’s not even clear whether what we’ve learnt about the (younger) Ellen or, for that matter, Elín herself, should be taken at face value. Has Elín made up everything? Is Ellen partly or completely the product of Elín’s imagination? These questions (and other, less important ones, which also remain unanswered) kept bothering me after I finished the book. I’m sure some would hold this in the book’s favour. I’m more conservative in that respect and prefer greater “closure”.

My second reservation, although less central to the novel, I found possibly more troubling. Throughout the book there are frequent references to violence and violent acts. Elín’s props are, more often than not, meant for some Nordic crime film or shocking play: the grisly list includes severed limbs, decaying corpses, scarred bodies, a doll to represent an abused minors. In what is quite a short book, there is also a chapter about quite a stomach-churning episode of sexual violence (no further details here to avoid ‘spoilers’) and a sub-plot involving an unlikely meeting with a serial killer. I’d like to think that I’m not a squeamish reader (I’ve read my share of horror stories), but I did feel that these unsavoury details were not essential to the novel.

Reservations aside, I am still pleased at the opportunity of discovering a new author in her English language debut, and (given it’s unlikely I will ever learn Icelandic) I will seek out translations of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s other works once they – hopefully – become available.

Elin is an aging prop-maker working in theatre and film. When she accepts a job designing props for a new play, she encounters up-and-coming playwright Ellen, the daughter of one of Iceland's greatest writers.

Elin becomes concerned about Ellen's nervousness and a seeming chaos about her approach to the play. She starts to keep an eye on her but is given a brusque dismissal. It soon becomes clear, however, that there are other reasons underlying Ellen's odd behaviour.

This a story of two fragile women, one waxing and one waning. The puzzling relationship between the two of them is gradually revealed before a very sad and affecting conclusion.

This Icelandic Literary Prize winner was not as good as I had hoped, or rather I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped. However, it's hard to judge harshly a book in translation as well as one written by and set in a different culture.

This is the first book that I read by Kristín Eiríksdóttir and I was surprised how much I could relate to what she talked about as Elín or as Ellen in her thoughts of different characters that she developed in her story. These thoughts have also come to me with taking care of my 104 year old father-in-law. Her fears with Ellen with people in general I can see in other people and wonder if they see their world in a different light than I do. I've had several strokes and have these funny feeling when I am in particular situations. She has her characters wonder about people and has them followed by Elín. And has Elín totally lost within herself at the end of the story. I would recommend that the people in my blog read this story to see how much empathy they have with the characters.

My feelings about "A Fist or a Heart" are all over the place. The writing is wonderful—succinct yet evocative. But the plot, such as it is, is both more obvious and more opaque than it needs to be. Having the protagonists' names be almost identical (Elín and Ellen) is a blatant way to signal the parallels between them (then again, the Icelandic title does translate to something like "Elín in Multiple"), and by the end I wondered what was the point of even introducing Ellen other than as some sort of mirror image of the primary narrator Elín. And that Elín would have, despite living an intentionally circumscribed existence, encountered such repeated traumas stretched plausibility... unless they're not all true but rather the erroneous memories of a woman with dementia? I'd definitely read more by Kristín Eiríksdóttir, but I can't unreservedly recommend this, except to those who enjoy a healthy dose of ambiguity in their reading.

Thank you, NetGalley and AmazonCrossing, for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed reading about Elin's creation of props for films and the theatre. I was less convinced by the connection between her and the young playwright, Ellen. I thought they should have much more to do with one another. Elin has clearly spent too much time on her own, and she gradually lises it as the novel goes on. Two stars.