4.5 Stars

A new author for me, set in a place I’ve never personally seen, although I’ve seen photographs that friends of mine took when they were in Reykjavik on business trips, the year for the main story is 1963, a year when much of the world was seeing changes. Changes in fashion, changes in music, and changes – at least in America – in politics, in the dreams to end racism, as well as relatively new visions for women about their own future. It was the year that four young men from Liverpool became a world-wide sensation, The Beatles, and John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the year of the “March on Washington” and Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, countless sit-in attempts, and other civil rights movement protests. The US involvement in Vietnam was growing, there was a military coup in Iraq, overthrowing Premier Abdel Karim Kassem, and on May 5th astronaut Gordon Cooper completed 22 orbits of earth, and a little more than a month later, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to orbit the earth. A Buddhit monk self immolates in Saigon in protests South Vietnamese government’s persecution again Buddhists. In the US, the average annual income was $5,807.00, an average new house cost $12,650.00 and the average new car cost $3,233.00, while a gallon of gas was 29 cents. LGBT legal protections advanced in some places in the 1960’s, but attitudes were another thing. The world had become a smaller place, and advances were made in some areas, where in others, people dug in their heels and resisted the thoughts of a life where women could be equal to men, and where sexual orientation didn’t determine your worth. Sexism and homophobia were the ‘norm’ and equality was for straight white men only. In 1960’s Iceland, women were either mothers or, if they had the honor of being chosen as Miss Iceland, a beauty queen, they had, at least, a brief reprieve from marriage and motherhood.

Hekla’s father named her for a volcano when she was born, and he took her to see it erupt when she was four and a half years old. When they returned, her mother tells her after some time about how that journey had changed her.

’You spoke differently. You spoke in volcanic language and used words like sublime, magnificent and ginormous. You had discovered the world above and looked up at the sky. You started to disappear and we found you out in the fields, where you lay observing the clouds; in the winter, we found you out on a mound of snow, contemplating the stars.’

This story is primarily Hekla’s, a 21-year-old woman who moves to Reykjavik, the heartland of literature for Iceland. Hekla is a writer who works as a waitress for money to live on, enduring the harassment by male customers at a café and is slowly working her way through reading Ulysses. The café where she works is a favourite of the local poets, writers who meet there regularly. A man offers her the opportunity to become “Miss Iceland,” persisting over and over, trying to convince her of this golden opportunity, while others simply harass her for her looks.

Her childhood friend is a woman who now has children and inundates her with the good, the bad and the ugly of motherhood. Her closest friend, David Jón John Johnsson, a man who works on a whaling ship. Jón John, who knows her best and loves her, confides in her, shares his fears as a gay man in a world that fears and abhors him, and his heartbreaks over the men who use him, making sure he knows they aren’t gay and swearing him to secrecy.

’This earth doesn’t belong to me. I only know what it’s like to be pressed into it.’

There’s something about this book, this story, the writing that was so atmospheric, that transported me to this place and this time, which made it hard for me to leave these people, and this place behind when I reached the last page. As melancholy as this story seems at times, there is so much beauty in the sharing, I felt enveloped in this sense of timelessness, where I wished I could just stay a little longer.


Published: 16 Jun 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic / Grove Press, Black Cat

I love everything by Audur Ava Olafsdottir. Reading this book in a heat wave made me even more aware of how atmospheric her writing is. The dreary cold and daily drudgery of 1963 Iceland, rife with homophobia and misogyny, is explored through the characters of Hekla and Jon John. Both are artists, and both suffer the constraints placed on them by a backward patriarchal society.

This book did not work for what I wanted, which was for inclusion in my subscription box. The writing is interesting -- very sparse. Definitely a different kind of storytelling than I am used to.

If you have ever seen TV or movie scenes set in Iceland, this will give you a leg up in reading the book. You can envision the characters in their daily lives. That is important as there isn’t much action to be had in this book. If one loves atmosphere and words, then this is the book for you.

An average book. What caught my attention in the release is that it's about 2 artists in Reykjavik. Set in the 60s, mostly it seems to be about the difficulty of being a woman author and that she's given no respect. Her 2 best friends are a gay man who is constantly discriminated against and bemoaning his fate, and a woman who is married w/ 2 kids at 22 and bemoaning her fate. Lots of bemoaning. The biggest nod to its setting is the names. We were in Reykjavik a few years ago and I actually recognized a couple of the street and area names, so that provided me some mental images. The writing style is almost free verse poetic, kind of random sometimes and difficult to understand the point. Overall, my take is that it's ......okay. (And can I just say that the cover is terrible and somehow implies a much lighter read that it really is - it's actually kind of dark.)
Thanks so much to #NetGalley and #GrovePress for the chance to read and offer my opinion on this book.

Miss Iceland, with its colorful cover and description, is not the optimistic romp you might be expecting. Instead, it is a heartbreaking look at the struggles women have faced in achieving their professional goals, regardless of whether or not they possess the talent to do so. Set in Iceland in the 1960's, I found myself frequently angry on behalf of the main character, and occasionally angry AT her for not standing up for herself more powerfully. Ultimately, it felt like a true and saddening opportunity to walk in her shoes, albeit one written in beautiful prose. I found myself too disappointed in the ending to rate this five stars, but then, if a book makes you feel that deeply and examine your opportunities so closely, perhaps it deserves the best rating after all.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 2.5 stars rounded down to 2 stars

I was so optimistic about this book. It is a work of historical fiction (set in the 1960’s). It is set in Iceland. It centers on a woman who has an internal compulsion to write. Three Strikes, ‘You’re In’. I quickly added it to my NetGalley reading queue. Despite those things that attracted me to this book, it just fell a bit flat for me.

We meet Hekla as she takes the bus from her small village to move to Reykjavik. Upon arriving in Reykjavik, she initially moves in with a good friend from her village, Jon John. Jon John is gay, and struggles with his own issues in 1960’s Iceland. He is also out at sea, working on fishing boats, a great deal of the time. Then Hekla meets a guy who has dreams of being a poet, and she eventually moves in with him.

Sadly, in this era and region, Hekla can’t get anyone to take her writing seriously. All sorts of men are constantly complimenting her on her beauty. One creepy guy keeps asking her to be in her ‘Miss Iceland’ pageant. Her writing skills are always discounted. She can’t even share her writing with her ‘poet’ boyfriend for fear of his ridicule, or his emasculation. He talks about writing. She writes.

The plot was just sad to me. When I was picturing the story in my mind, it was running as a grainy Black and White film. It was not in Technicolor. The book’s pace is slow. The people were either full of angst and quiet desperation, or were self-absorbed jerks. Perhaps that is how it really was in the 1960’s in Iceland. I am so grateful that I was not a woman, or gay, coming-of-age in that era and location. There were moments and passages of radiant writing. There were also many times that it felt like the author was just trying too hard to be profound. It turns out that for me, this book should have been Three Strikes, ‘You’re Out’.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, Grove Atlantic, Black Cat; and the author, Audur Ava Olafsdottir for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

There is so much I want to share - I’m ACHING!!!!!!
Guess, I just need to rant a minute....
Here goes>>>>>>> LOVE ACHE LOVE ACHE LOVE ACHE LOVE ACHE ....
TEARS....I’m trying to type through tears....
I can’t express enough the impact this book has on me....GOD, I’M SOOOOOOOOOO GLAD I READ IT!
Thank you, thank you, thank you: Audur Ave Olafsdottir, Grove Atlantic, and Netgalley!!!!!! BIG TIME THANK YOU!!!!!

Perhaps it’s our pandemic, [ GRIEVING for and with our families, friends, and communities, with at ‘least’ 440,000 worldwide deaths], due to the coronavirus....
Or
The reality of racial inequality, injustice, discrimination - the need for serious police reform - [BLACK LIVES MATTER] -
Or
America’s policy issues: Conservatism vs. Progressivism,
Or
our overall health care system, concerns
Or
immigration issues
Or
our election integrity......
BUT THIS BOOK is one of the most harrowing, powerful, and imaginative books novels I’ve read this year!!!
It’s little.....thin-slim....
Great things come in small packages! It won’t take long to read....( but I admit reading parts several times)....I loved this small fry story....so I was in no rush to speed read it.
Oh, my god.... I did something I never do. At 95% done....only 5% more to read — I purposely put the book down for a few hours.
And WOW..... how did I intuitively know that was a smart move? I wasn’t expecting to feel so emotional in the last 5 percent.

Intellectually speaking..... I can say what this book covers:
It explores freedom, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, artistic fulfillment, and friendship.....
......haunted by history, piercing literary imagination......
an unassailable tribute to *hope*.....in the shadow of absurdities, layered consciousness, and harsh realities.
Olafsdottir’s sublime talent....plunges into the superficial...plunged right into my heart!

Emotionally speaking ......it goes much deeper than words.
Its ‘experientially’ felt!

I loved everything about this book....the narrative, the descriptions, the dialogue, the characters, the Icelandic atmosphere, the gorgeous prose, the emotions I’m feeling now (ache, sadness, appreciation, hope, empathy, and love)

I’m embarrassed to say this next sentence (again).....as I’ve been here before - and......
I don’t want to come off sounding like a wacky cheerleader......
but truth be told....
when a book is THIS DEAR TO MY HEART....
I WANT TO SCREAM TO MY FRIENDS....***READ IT***

The ending ZAPPED ME.....I WILL THINK ABOUT IT FOR A LONG TIME!!!

Some specifics:
.....We follow Hekla Gottskalksdottir....(in her 20’s), she wants to be a writer. The book begins in the 1940’s. .....moves into the 1960’s.
Hekla left Dalir for Reykjavik......to work ....to write. ( more backstory about her family, birth, name, parents are learned).
Iceland has many male poets...but women poets? women novelists? They are pretty much chopped liver.

Society men would prefer Hekla to raise her skirt above her knees and doll herself up, rather than wear comfy trousers. And why should it matter to others what anyone wants to wear?

.....We meet Hekla’s best ‘guy’ friend: Jon John. He’s gay. He wishes he had a real boyfriend. He also wishes to work in a costume department have a theater....designing and sewing for Shakespeare plays and other theater productions.

.....We meet Hekla’s best girl friend, Isey, ( married with one little girl; later a second girl baby is born). Isey’s husband, Lydur worries ( a little) that Hekla might be influencing Isey with too much nonsense about writing.
Jon John says:
“Men only want to sleep with me when they’re drunk, they don’t want to talk afterwords and be friends. While they’re pulling up their trousers, they make you swear three times that you won’t tell anyone. They take you to the outskirts of Heidmork and you’re lucky if they drive you back into town”.

“I wish I weren’t the way I am, but I can’t change that. Men are meant to go with women. I sleep with men”.

“I don’t belong to any group,
Hekla. I am a mistake who shouldn’t have been born. He hesitates.
I can’t make sense of myself. I don’t know where I come from. This earth doesn’t belong to me. I only know what it’s like to be pressed into it”.


.....We meet Starkadur (often referred to as ‘The Poet’). He becomes Hekla’s boyfriend. He wishes to be a great writer...but can’t think of what to write.

**** All the characters were struggling with ‘something’! I cherished the many sides sides of the characters dispositions .....and learned from each of them.

.....We meet Odin....the cat 🐱

An atmospheric visual: ( a mouthful of Icelandic street names)...
I moved out of the attic room on Styrimannastigur into the attic room on Skolavordustigur”.
“ In the basement there is an upholstery store, beside which are a dairy shop and a picture framer, diagonally across from a cobbler and barber. There is also a corner shop, a dry cleaners and a toy workshop where they replace the eyes of dolls that have been damaged”.

Want to know about *Miss Iceland*? Every girls dream? Ha!
“...Miss Iceland gets a crown and sceptre, a blue Icelandic festival costume with a golden belt for the competition on Long Island, two gowns and a coat with a fur collar. She gets to stand on stage and go to nightclubs and meet famous boxers and she gets her picture in the papers”. .....
.......Hekla isn’t interested in the beauty society!
“A single sentence is more important than my body”, Hekla thinks.

Isey asks Hekla, “which do you want most, to have a boyfriend or write books?”
In Hekla’s dream world,
“the most important things would be: a sheet of paper, fountain pen and a male body.
“When we’ve finished making love, he’s welcome to ask if he can refill the fountain pen with ink for me”.

Isey says, “ Women have to choose, Hekla”.
“Both in equal measure”.
Hekla adds, “I need to be both alone and not alone”.
“That means that you are both a writer and ordinary”.

Gorgeous moments....
“The skylight has misted up in the night, a white patina of snow has formed on the windowsill. I drape the poets sweater over me, move into the kitchen to get a cloth to wipe it up. A trail of sleet streams down the glass, I traced it with my finger. Apart from the squawk of seagulls, a desolate stillness reigns over Skolavordustigur”.

A quandary....( a jealous boyfriend?)....hmmmm?.
“He stopped reading for me, he’s stop saying: Listen to this, Hekla.
“Instead he wants to know if I’ve written today. And for how long”.
“Were you writing?”
“Yes, I reply”.
“How many pages?”
“I skim through the manuscript: twelve”.
“You’ve changed so much since we met. If you’re not working, you’re writing. If you’re not writing, you’re reading. You’d drain your own veins if you ran out of ink. Sometimes I feel you only moved in with me to have a roof over your head”.

Know much about Ptarmigans? I googled a YouTube video and watched how a funny guy cooked OUT IN THE SNOW of about 9 degrees.....a ptarmigan in olive oil, garlic, onions cabbage carrots ...adding ‘the Ptarmigan’, last.
.............[a northern grouse of mountainous and arctic regions, with feathered legs and feet]


Our younger daughter worked 3 different summers in Iceland. Its where she met her husband. They live in a Canada today.
I’d love to visit Iceland 🇮🇸 ... but whether or not that ever happens...
I will always cherish this story....with an ending that made me cry!

Recently translated from the original Icelandic, Miss Iceland is a novel about a young aspiring novelist named Hekla in 1960s Reykjavik. She moves from her small town into the city to pursue her dream. Staying with a childhood friend, Jon John, they are both confronted with prejudiced views of the time, he for being gay and she for being a woman.

This book is kind of quiet and slow-paced, but I really liked the characters and the ambiance. I liked Hekla’s strong character and her commitment to her writing. I felt gutted by the injustices she and Jon John faced. The sense of entitlement with which Hekla was treated by men was sickening. Aside from that, the setting in place and time were quite intriguing and absorbing.

It gave me vibes of the Beat generation, with the artistic community, and the poets café. The posturing among the male artists, and their treatment of Hekla, who is successful in her own right, must have been the experience of many female writers throughout history. The character of Isey was an interesting almost foil to Hekla’s character, kind of a window onto her path not taken. The book swept me through a range of emotions, from bleak and despairing to hopeful. I liked the matter-of-fact writing style and the overall tone of the book. I think it would appeal to readers of different genres and especially to aspiring writers. It is unusual, but worth the read!

Thank you to NetGalley for the free review copy of this book!

This book wasn't really what I expected, but now that I go back and read the summary, I realise that I probably went off the path a bit, imagining things that weren't really there. It's a fast read (I read it in about 2 sittings), and what is most remarkable about it is that it doesn't even really need to be set in the 60s. It's a nice aesthetic, sure, and if it was set in any other time period (such as a more recent one), some of the more quirky details would be lost, but the story itself could be a story happening today. The main character, Hekla, begins her story by leaving her small town for the "big" city, and dreams of becoming a writer in a society and atmosphere that is dominated by men. She begins to room with her gay best friend, Jon John, who only wants to be a designer but is stuck in the life of a sailor, surrounded by gay men who always return home to their wives. Eventually she finds herself a quiet librarian/poet and moves in with him and his other poetry circle peers. They're both writers, and she, unbeknownst to him, is more successful, but struggles knowing that it probably wouldn't be true if she published under her own name instead of a male pseudonym. Hence, why she struggles to publish her novel now, as herself. She works in a hotel cafe where she is forced to wear a skirt and where all the older men tell her that her life is a waste if she doesn't compete for a beauty pageant and run off to Long Island with a creepy chaperone for a life of subjection. Eventually, with the help of a friend who struggles with being a young mother and fears she won't amount to much, Hekla decides to leave her boyfriend, her country and her life and rejoin Jon John in Denmark, who left on sailor's duty from Iceland and escaped that miserable existence by simply not returning to the ship one day. They live and create together in beautiful harmony, finally living the life that they both left Iceland to chase. They get married to cheapen the costs of travelling together and presumably continue to chase the dream of writing and designing and living happily ever after doing what they love. Eventually, Hekla (named after a volcano that her father loves more than her, which is presumably why she wants to make a name for herself instead of literally living under the shadow of a mountain) finishes her novel, essentially based on her life (albeit with a few aesthetic changes) and gets a chance to publish it - also under a pseudonym, but at least this time it's a female one.

Not really a review as much as an overarching summary to reassure myself that I was actually paying attention when I whizzed through this. You can see how it feels like a timeless story, wanting to leave the small, constricting environment you grew up in, wanting to explore everything there is to see in the world, and finding freedom, but also more restrictions because the things you want are seemingly against what society dictates. Hekla, a talented writer, wants to be recognised for her own work. Jon John just wants to love who he loves, and feel happy about it. Even Isey, young and with two small children, has landed in a life that she neither wanted nor agreed to, but is trying to do the best with the life she is given and take joy in the small happy things. I didn't like the poet (whose name I cannot remember, but mostly because Hekla only really referred to him as "the poet"), who constantly called Jon John "the queer" and became jealous every time Hekla spent any time with him at all - not because he thought they were sleeping together, but because of what others would think and assume of himself. When he and Hekla first meet, it is the fact that she is a writer that attracts him to her, but later when he finds out that she's actually published - and that she is the mystery author of the poetry that his group was obsessed with solving - he and his fragile masculinity and fear of a girl being better than him change their tune and start to inhibit her passions for writing. Then again, perhaps calling him "the poet" instead of his name was a clever way for the author to insinuate that he's not the end of Hekla's story, nor is he really that important to it, in the end. The book didn't really have chapters, instead it had what I am choosing to call little vignettes, which felt more like snippets of a story instead of the whole thing. It made the book feel choppy, and I wasn't particularly a fan. Overall, the writing did feel a bit poetic and artistic, which, for all intents and purposes, does kind of fit with the vibe of the book. I just wish I had the chance to get further into the characters' minds with a complete thought, for once. I simultaneously want to leave this book behind and just be happy I finished it, but I also want to see further into the lives of these characters, and read more deeply into their thoughts and feelings. All I want is for Hekla and Jon John to have a happy life, together or apart. I hope they get what they want most out of it, leaving the restrictions of their childhood home behind and finding what they most want in the world. And I hope that Hekla picks a much smaller book to practise her English than Ulysses.

I sometimes struggle with translated work and this one was another that was difficult to get into for me. However, I did enjoy the plot and characters. I would be curious to read other titles from this author.

This book was somewhat of a difficult read. Translated into English, at times the writing felt clunky and the transition from chapter to chapter (or section to section) felt a bit arbitrary. But hidden in there was a moving story of a young woman trying to be independent and write and her homosexual friend. Both stuck in Iceland in the late 1960s, not an environment friendly to either situation. While Hekla seemed to be able to put off the men trying to entice her in to enter a beauty contest, or alternatively cop a feel while she waited on them, Jon John was mired in his despair, wanting only for a boyfriend and lamenting that he loved men and not women. Their acceptance and support of each other truly made this book what it is!

Miss Iceland is the story of a young female writer in the very male-centric Icelandic society of the 1960s. One day Hekla moves to Reykjavik where her two closest friends live. Isey is a very young stay at home mother and Jon John is their gay fisherman friend. Hekla finds a job working as a serving girl where she fends off the men trying to grab her and pestering her to compete for the Miss Iceland title. Hekla also finds a poet boyfriend but she does not tell him that she is a published writer. Then Jon John leaves Iceland for Denmark and Hekla has to reveal her secret.

This book is very much about breaking out of oppressive cultures. With Hekla you have an amazing writer who has to hide her gender from publishers and her writing from the local poets. Isey who begins to write stories in her journals about the new neighbor and death because this world in which she spends all day every day with her baby is driving her crazy. Finally Jon John spends his time staying away from the cops on land and protecting himself on the fishing boat.

I spent so much of this book just wanting to yell at about every other character in it because just the way gender roles are assumed to be was driving me crazy and it makes me happy that I did not live in 1960s Iceland. But it was a book of hope and finding what makes you sing while being generous at the same time. I am very interested to read her other books.

This was ultimately a desperately sad portrayal of three young people all wanting to be more than they were allowed to be back in the 1960s in Iceland. Hekla, named after a volcano and a talented writer, is determined to rise above prejudice and stereotype to succeed as a novelist, despite being female. Jon John is gay and searching for meaning and his place in the world. Isey, Hekla’s friend, is struggling with life as a young wife and mother. I really enjoyed the Icelandic setting, the subtle irony suggested by the title of the novel (Miss Iceland was certainly something Hekla did NOT aspire to) and the lyricism of some of the writing. I found it a little disjointed in parts though - possibly because of the translation? – so that the story didn’t flow for me as well as it could have. I found the ending horribly depressing, but it perfectly summed up the themes of this book.

I enjoyed reading this book set in Iceland, the talk of the country and the foreign phrases and names were very entertaining . The name is a bit strange but Insure appreciates her attempts to follow her passions.

I enjoyed this story that followed mainly Hekla, but also two of her friends in their effort to find solid footing in the world as outsiders for varying reasons. I missed that my familiarity with the Icelandic alphabet has disintegrated such that I don’t think I pronounce place names correctly anymore.

I so wanted this book to work for me. And I so wanted to like this book. But sadly, that is not the case. There is no background detail about beauty pageants. The character development is not good and the mostly I can't get connect to the book. This book had so much potential but alas didn't work for me.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this book.

I absolutely hate when a book's description ends up being nothing like the book is actually about and Miss Iceland is one of the worst offenders of this I've ever seen. There is actually very little about a beauty pageant, but we're lead to believe it's a big part of the story.

Not a lot of information is given on the characters and that makes it extremely hard to form connections with them. At no point to we know what the main character is thinking so it makes her actions seem so disjointed. I actually didn't like her much at all.

The writing on this also seems very choppy. I understand that this is a translation so I can let that slid a bit, but this was extreme. I kept waiting for something to happen but ended up disapointed.

Miss Iceland wasn't for me at all. I thought the story was way too melodramatic, and I ended up not caring at all about the main character's life problems. Like, can we get a book set in a Scandinavian country that isn't super depressing?

I also had a major problem with the gay side character. I'm so sick of LGBT characters being miserable all the time - the only thing he did in the novel was mope and put himself down for being a gay man. I'm not trying to disregard the issues gay Europeans experienced in the time that Miss Iceland takes place, of course, but I've just read too many books without happy endings for these characters. I know that there really aren't that many people who identify as LGBT and feel bad about themselves every second of the day because of it like the guy in Miss Iceland does.

While the mediocre gay character was my main reason for disliking this novel, I also just thought it was too angsty in general.

This is a moody story with a fantastic mail character. Her journey is incredibly engaging and she stays with you for a long time.