I enjoyed this weird little book. I did get lost in some parts. That might just be a translation situation.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and HarperVia for my copy Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jon Kalman Stefansson in exchange for an honest review. It published September 7, 2021.
I admit, I tried very hard to get into this book. I had just finished two other Icelandic books, so I was hoping to continue my “travel” there. However, I had a very hard time with this book. Specifically the objectification of a female character and all the sexual remarks about her.

Summer Night & Then Comes Night by Jon Kalm Stefansson is an interesting book. There are 400 people is this small town. One would think it was very boring and predictable. It is cold and there isn’t much light for part of the year. They all know each other’s business and all gossip together. A new road, into town had the towns people all dreaming of a way out.. a different life and all the things that road means.. This story has everything love, lust secrets and turmoil. What has always been, will not always be. Sometimes change is good, sometimes you can’t go back. The individual characters are interesting and the story is well written. This was a 3 1/2 star read for me. It was good but not my usual read. I am grateful to Netgalley & the author for my copy for an honest review. It is always a pleasure to read a new book by a new (author to me).. what are your thoughts?

An enjoyable look at life through the lens of a small Scandinavian town, the characters in it, and how they relate to each other. The author makes the characters feel alive, and makes you care about their trials and tribulations. I enjoyed the format of the book - little vignettes connected to each other through the characters in the town. I think my favorite was perhaps the first story, as bittersweet as it was, which told the story of the local factory manager who became the town “astronomer,” and the dangerous of looking too long at the stars. Overall, there was something both cozy about the setting but bittersweet about all the ways that the author looks at relationships in the books. I would recommend this book to friends as an enjoyable read and something that will stick out in one’s reading memory, due to both the format and the content.

Beautiful, but complicated sentences:
<blockquote><I>[We're not going to tell you about the whole village; we won't be going from house to house. You would find that intolerable. But we'll definitely be telling you about the lust that binds together days and nights, about a happy lorry driver, about Elisabet's dark velvet dress and the man who arrived by bus; about Puriour, who is tall and full of esoteric desires, about a man who couldn't count the fish and a woman who breathed shyly; about a lonely farmer and a 4,000-year-old mummy. We're going to tell of everyday events, but also of those that are beyond our understanding —possibly because there are no explanations for them. People disappear, dreams change lives, folk nearly two hundred years old apparently decide to make their presence known instead of lying quietly in their place.]</i></blockquote>
There are two things I think you should know before reading the book: 1) it's almost 20 years old, so it deals with the world of the Aughties not today; 2) it is highly episodic, in fact it's a collection of linked short stories in my opinion not a novel. That seems to cause severe digital retraction from buy buttons, though, so pretend I didn't speak.

In a small place, Life is magnified because we are social animals; the issue is, what to do with that finer-grained view of Others this grants us...judge, blame? forgive, accept? deny, ignore?...and those variable and varying answers are this book. The Greek-chorus-ness of the village (see above), like that used with less success (in my opinion) in the well-received <i>Lanny</i>, gave me a sense of place that kept me reading past the author's clearly articulated disdain for Americans.

Summer Night, and Then Comes the Night had an interesting premise but I found it lacking in delivery. The narrator presented a tale of two men through short stories and interactions with fellow villagers in their Icelandic seaside village. I found the story more melancholy than whimsical. Many of the women in the story seemed to be described in one-dimension and unflattering ways. For example: "Helga is around 40, unmarried, she has one child and a soft beautiful neck. The father of her child, a farmer from the countryside in the south, thinks about her quite a lot, about her neck, which he kisses often in his mind, and which we perhaps do, too. "

For me, this novel was a miss. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this eARC.

I have mixed feelings about this story. The writing was beautiful and lyrical, but I think I was expecting more plot, or any plot really, and my enjoyment suffered because of it.

The story tells of a small town in rural Iceland and weaves among the villagers of this town as they go about their lives. And that's it. Each character was incredibly unique and I liked the way the author built them until the village itself felt like a main character, but I would have preferred if it was building to something.

DNF @ 10%

I had a really hard time getting into this one and just knew that since I found it a chore to read I would probably rate it low. There was nothing wrong with this, just wasn't for me

Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson is a quiet, meditative book that centers around daily lives of people in a small Icelandic village.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this book. No doubt, the story is beautifully written at the sentence level, but the plot itself was lacking for me. Much of the novel is about philosophizing about the nature of life and death and focuses on the relationships between characters, but beyond that, there isn’t much.

With all the mentions of strange dreams and inexplicable buzzing sounds, I had hoped the story was building up to lead into cosmic horror, but in the end, it doesn't go anywhere and the ending was unfortunately underwhelming me.

All in all, I think I would have preferred if the magical realism in this book was less subtle, but this might be a case of it’s not you, it’s me. Ultimately, this book just wasn’t my cup of tea.

I normally read several books at once but I can honestly say this book demanded all my attention. Beautifully written even, in translation I loved the tales of these Icelandic characters. Wonderful stories.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC. I found this a beautiful lyrical piece of writing. It deals with the people in a small Icelandic village and their histories, interactions and behavioral quirks. There really is not a distinct plot, which some people may not like.

Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night is a novel in parts painting a portrait of a small town in Iceland. Each section focuses on a series of characters and explores various aspects of the human condition. The book is roughly linear, but not slavishly so, and the characters weave in and out of each others stories in a very naturalistic way.

I really loved this book. I am a sucker for books that meander when describing a place. I loved the use of language and the collective narrator. I enjoy learned about the townspeople and seeing how their lives entwine.

It took me more than a week to read the book. I took my time because I was enjoying it and I wanted to savor the experience. Very cool book!

Very good. This author has a keen sense of observation, and excellent writing chops as well. This is a potent combo, and makes it a pretty memorable collection. Recommended for short story and anthology fans.

I hated to leave this book at the end but it left me with an enormous feeling of having been there, when I've never been there. Each and every story I could relate too in some way, I think Jón Kalaman Stefánsson seem to be thinking of how can I get Ken to like this story. They never had a definite outcome until the final story. I think this book would be a perfect fit for a TV show. Don't expect it to be far from it. I really like it, and hope you read it too.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. I really enjoyed this one and read it in one day. Look forward to much more by this author.

Summer Light and Then Comes the Night (2020) is the latest translation by Philip Roughton of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s novels.
This book deals with everyday life in a small village in Iceland and has some very sharp observations. It shows all of human behaviour in its unpolished form. The ugliness of reality is right in front of the reader and can not be ignored. Although some events seem unlikely or over the top, this enables the writer to expose several societal issues or human problems (affairs, visions of the future etc.). There is no main character, instead, the village itself tells the story. As a reader there is no point in trying to predict the story, you just have to submit yourself to the course of the story and, just as in the book, see how the pebbles in the sea head under water and reveal themselves again.

Thanks to Netgalley for this book

Really enjoyed this book! It was the first one for me to read by this author and I can't wait to read more! The characters stick with you long after the book is over.