This book was basically the torture of a mentally ill woman in an abusive relationship. Trigger warnings for very graphic depictions of self-harm, suicide attempts, and sexual assault. I liked neither the stream-of-conscience style writing, nor the main character's frustrating refusal to do anything that would better her own circumstances. This book was definitely not my style. I don't think I can handle frustrating main characters. I spent the whole book begging her to make literally any other choices than the ones she did.

A quick read, but a deeply troubling one about a woman's descent into depression and, for lack of a better phrase, rock bottom. It's extremely well-written and incredibly sad.

One of the rare books that I actually manage to finish in one setting. Watching the slow unfolding of a toxic relationship through bare bones vignettes made this impossible to put down.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got me to read on even though it was among 296 other books I’m charged to read.

"The very best thing for me would be to end it with him and to stop being such a psycho. But I can't stay away from him for very long. I can't lose him. I love him with every cell in my body and I would waste away without him. Whether I stay or go I will still be crazy."

concise and poignant. i loved this book's clean, succinct writing style and thought that hjörleifsdóttir penned quite the compelling story of an abusive relationship here. the narrator is not particularly fascinating as a character but i enjoyed her sometimes analytical and sometimes miserable voice. i didn't love the ending, as it felt much more optimistic than the rest of the novella without us seeing how lilja got there, but i liked this book overall.

Dark emotional book, that's reasonably well written, based on a abusive relationship that begins to spiral.

This book made me uncomfortable deep into my bones, my soul, my heart. What a writer! The terrible beauty of this short novel, and I think the author recognizes this, is that this story is one that could be told by hundreds of women, but Hjörleifsdóttir told it in such a way because our society deems it inappropriate to talk about such things. About how these men exist, sucking the joy, the hope, the will to live out of the women they touch, they interact with, they deem 'worthy' of their advances. This book is a perfect example of a work of art that is terrible to behold, but is so, so hard to turn away from in its horror - a horror that consumes so many. Lilja frustrated me throughout her story, making so many reckless decisions, sticking by someone with no love or regard for her - but that's the point, isn't it? How easy it is to fall for these monsters disguised as men who take what little shreds of dignity and self-worth Lilja and women like her have left? The ending left me unsatisfied, but it does make sense where Hjörleifsdóttir chose to leave off. I'll be thinking about Magma for quite some time.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC.

Magma is, first and foremost, a story about a deeply abusive relationship and how the main character gets to the point of not seeing leaving as an option.

We follow two characters who live together and are, to the reader, obviously not suited for each other. I found this book unnecessarily bleak, lacking subtlety and any depth about the situation and characters.
Furthermore, this book tonally made little sense as it had moments of being optimistic that felt out of place with the rest of the book.

Magma is largely devoid of plot and staying in the protagonist’s mind, even in the form of a novella, can be very tiring, repetitive, and frustrating.

For a certain reader, this book can be incredibly triggering. Please make sure to read the blurb before picking it up.

This Icelandic book translated into English is a compulsive read but I think it is important to stress that the topic can be very triggering for some.
Lilja is 20 and in a very grown-up relationship with an older man. As she tells her tale she is not privy to the abuse that her manipulative partner is slowly subjecting her to.
This is a very dark novel but told in a very readable way so you keep turning the page desperately hoping she finds a way out.. It is a novel that speaks out about abusive relationships and hopefully shows the warning signs of abusive behaviour.

Loved this! It's tender and gentle but also terrifying and sad. It did not end in the way I was expecting, which makes the ending even stronger and more realistic.

This was a short novella length prose that deals with the relationship between Lilja and an extremely unsuitable and abusive man. I felt that the description of the book was not really any reflection on what this book was about. The woman justifies every facet of the abusive relationship that she is in using common things that women tell themselves in domestic violence situations. Lilja unravels in the name of love and deals with sexual and emotional abuse. She turns this pain in on herself and determines that she is at fault. This book was painful to read at times and really came across as stream of consciousness and didn't really have any type of momentum towards anything besides the mental and emotional decline at the hands of another. This book was essentially about the lies that we tell ourselves to condone bad behavior from others and to condone toxicity in relation to ourselves in relationships. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

This book just didn't do it for me. This is not to say there was anything wrong with it. There wasn't. And maybe if I knew the author's original language and had read it in said language, I would have had a better experience. Some translations just don't hit the mark. While I did finish this book, I just don't have too many things to say about it. The ideas in the book were pretty strong. I enjoyed some of the themes. But overall, this one wasn't for me.

Lilja falls for unnamed men. Unnamed man is literate —he quotes Derrida— but not emotionally. He’s a handbook narcissist who chips at his prey’s sanity little by little. And so Lilja falls into a downward spiral that will lead her to do the unthinkable. Hjörleifsdóttir leaves no room for a romanticised honeymoon phase, and details from the very beginning the many red flags perched atop of unnamed man’s head like antlers. They’re as detectable as Las Vegas’ lights from space, but when you meet (or have a long-standing relationship with) someone who presents narcissistic/manipulative tendencies, your body’s chemistry and unhealthy, untreated psychological patterns will let you gloss over the warning signs. So you’re lured into the vampire’s vault, and once you’re stuck like a mosquito onto a spider web, it’s hard —but not impossible— to detach yourself from it. Lilja’s way of narrating her descent into the abyss felt strikingly accurate: the perseverance, the craziness, the excuses, the grief. It cuts right at the heart of the abuse.

This is a short novel that packs a sharp punch, it will leave you reeling. What is real and what is not? That is the truth of psychological and emotional abuse. You don’t see it but it’s there and it will drive you to insanity. The prose is spare, essential almost —yet never unoriginal— and minutely conveys the modes of abuse, the glaciality and subtlety of it.

Reading Magma felt like throwing salt at an open wound; but sometimes pain is necessary to let us know which parts of us still need healing.

The outstanding translation from the Icelandic is by Meg Matich.

A short, graphic, cautionary tale about an abusive relationship. Narrated by the victim, it’s a provocative and predictable description of a descent into self harm and depression by a woman choosing to obliterate her identity in order to fool herself that the violent, unfaithful and generally repulsive man she lives with is her savior. Not helped by an abrupt and unconvincing ending.

First loves seems so true and pure that Lilja is really elated. Sometimes, though we want something so bad, we lie to ourselves. Lilja writes this in almost journal style, so it’s only possible to get her prospective. She longs for a true love and wonderful boyfriend, and seems to have found one in her literate, intelligent, vegetarian guy.

As you read her entries though, it is apparent this relationship requires much of her and little of her beloved. He doesn’t like many things, so she changes herself to conform to him. He has an ex-girlfriend he keeps in contact with and cheats on her with. He meets her parents and reads a book at the dinner table. He makes her do things sexually that make her very uncomfortable. This is her fault, her undoing, her blame, her problems, her core being is at fault.

This is an emotionally abusive relationship. It creeps up on the reader slowly. This boyfriend does many little things that are inconsiderate, then he moves onto bigger things. It makes Lilja question herself constantly. So, is this just love gone a bit astray or something much more serious? I don’t think Lilja at the point she is writing this can see, but we, the reader can. It’s absorbing and it’s sad. This is not a love story. It is an abuse story and Lilja will take a tremendous toll for trying to be the perfect girlfriend.

So, I think the writer is quite talented. I think this is a very difficult subject, but very real.

Thank you NetGalley, Thora Hjörleifsdóttir and Grove Press for a copy of this engaging book.

A quick and intense read chronicling an abusive relationship using short, diary type chapters. It made me a bit too mad for it to be a five star read and I didn't quite love the ending but it is absolutely well worth the hype, with its perfectly sharp chapters with perfectly sharp prose, and its main character who is difficult: she is lonely and judgemental and even in the midst of her (horrible!) relationship that she knows is horrible cannot admit that her friends might know what they are talking about when they say they are worried.

This strangely enthralling read documents one young woman’s experiences within a physically and emotionally abusive relationship. The stripped back style creates a sense of constant momentum, which in turn establishes a stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere that saw me immediately drawn in. In fact, I felt so invested in our heroine’s fate that I found myself racing through the book in a single sitting.

For a relatively slight novel, the author does a fantastic job of showcasing the realities of isolation and depression. With a deft hand, she shows the devastating impact of abuse, and just how easy it can be for perpetrators to coerce and manipulate those around them; forcing them into modifying their own behaviour and gaslighting them into self-blame.

My only gripe with the book comes with the ending, which is inherently tricky to discuss without resorting to spoilers. Suffice to say that, while I appreciated the outcome from a narrative perspective, the potentially clumsy message it conveyed worked less well for me.

Still, this slight blip didn’t detract from the overall success of the sucker punch that is this little novel. It’s brutally honest in its portrayal of a woman in decline, without ever feeling gratuitous, and it serves as a poignant reminder that even the most outwardly strong and carefree among us can be broken.

I sincerely hope more of Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir’s work is translated into English in the future!

Thank you to the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The loss is so slow even the reader is at a loss . A young women , in her first real intimate adventure starts out sound and strong and whole. As the romance,if you can call it that, continues she almost loses herself, her mind, her sanity. It’s a psychological study so subtle and alluring bound by new emotions ,getting caught up in the illusion is part of 5he attraction.

This is one of the most effective books I’ve read that touches on the isolation and depression that results from domestic abuse. Translated from the Icelandic by Meg Matich, Magma chronicles in tense, taut prose one girl’s experience with a controlling and manipulative partner. The reader is thrown head-first into Lilja’s reality--this isn’t a slow descent from stability to instability; this is a snapshot of an already-fragile and lonely woman being broken apart more and more at every turn.

I read this book in under an hour in a single sitting, which is pretty much exactly what it demands of the reader; I can imagine that it’s at its most effective when the insularity of the story is amplified by the reading experience. And that’s exactly what I found so intense and moving about this book--I felt like I intimately knew this character by the end of this very slim novella, and I couldn’t get her out of my head for days to follow. Magma is brutal but it’s also incisive and layered and unapologetic. Highly recommended if you find that this kind of narrative really sings when coupled with a pared-down prose style.

Trigger warnings abound for abuse, sexual assault, and self-harm.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

What an utterly devastating novella MAGMA is. Translated from Icelandic, this work can be read in one sitting as Hjörleifsdóttir's writing is propelling and hard to look away from. It tells the tragic story of an abusive relationship told from the eyes of a young woman fueled by obsession and lust. The prose is sparse but harrowing, cold but full of life. The character of Lilja is a study of depression and mental torture and the relationship she falls prey to is an all to well-known tale of emotional abuse. It feels strange to rate such a short novel, and one that is so emotional and raw, but it is easily a 5 star read as it completely knocked me on my feet.