"I didn't dare ask, how do you migrate? What do you do about all the things that quiver?
Probably no one at the table could answer that question. Who are we? The Faroese, those who stayed, and us, the blood guests, biological seeds sown by migrants?"

What's it like, to feel out of place, to not feel home at home, to feel more yourself in a land that should have been your home? Jacobsen's "Island" explores the relationships within families, the bonds we have to our home and our ancestry. It's a look into the ways migration shapes the lives of future generations and their search for a home that should feel familiar, yet in which they still feel like intruders—like tourists.

The family from the Faroes appears mundane – they are not war heroes, or famous politicians. They are simply a family, one of many affected by the second world war, seeking opportunities, wishing for a safe place to plant trees and raise their children. Yet through the eyes of the protagonist, the memories of a child, they gain a certain magic. The family holds its secrets and traumas, but they are loved for them, despite them, nonetheless. It's the interwoven connection between life and love and death; the way a place, a moment, a person can be home.

Jacobsen's prose through the lens of Waight's translation is hauntingly beautiful, It builds a painting of greys, blues, and greens, islands surrounded by islands, floating and standing. My one gripe was the graphic descriptions of abortion and birth, which made me squeamish, though I suppose they can also attest to how impactful Jacobsen's prose was.

"Island" is a story about the simplicity of life—and the complexity of it. It's a story about how the smallest elements of our surroundings shape us, how every decision affects those who will come after us. Most of all, it's a story about searching for—and finding—home.

Island is a fantastic story of a Danish woman looking back at her family roots and the various fables that are attached to each of her ancestors. The death of her grandparents instills the need in her parents to go back to their hometown to discover and be one with her Faroese routes. The narrations of the present day thoughts the stories of the past in intertwined with each which made the read somewhat confusing for me. I think if I read in the physical form I would have enjoyed the experience a bit more.

I quite enjoyed travelling through time and space to discover various interesting and somewhat magical stories of a family history. Reminded me a lot of the many long lost stories that were told by my grandmother about our ancestors. It has a mystical and heartwarming feeling attached to it, which I think a lot of readers will thoroughly enjoy. Definitely planning to read more from this author in the future.

Island is a really evocative novel about a Danish girl with Faroese heritage who comes back to the islands for a funeral. I found the descriptions of the Faroese life and landscapes to be really atmospheric and the author did a great job in making the reader feel part of the unique life of the islands. I love most things to do with the Faroe Islands, so this definitely fed my interest in the islands and makes me want to visit them again.

Something about the book that I really loved was the way in which the author describes how it feels to leave your country of birth and make a life for yourself somewhere new, but always feeling a yearning and a tie to your ‘home’ country. As an expat, I really identified with this sentiment and how sometimes ‘home’ can begin to feel foreign.

One aspect that I did find difficult about the book was the changes between point of views and stories- these were sometimes unclear. This could have been down to how the review copy was formatted on my kindle, rather than a creative choice, but it did interrupt my enjoyment of the story.

I really wanted to like this one. It started off so promising. Great atmosphere and wonderful descriptions along with a story that I was interested in. Things progressed well for the first 2/3 of the book, presenting small snippets of family history that sort of wove together in a way and I thought it was all going to make sense in the end, like some kind of epiphany. It didn't. Instead, the novel wound up feeling like a series of short vignettes with no real purpose. There wasn't a thoughtful ending that made sense to me or impacted me in any way. Instead, things just sort of dropped off.

The writing was good and lyrical and I can understand why this novel has praise in that sense. But the construction of the narrative was just less than I expected.

* Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. *

“I didn’t dare ask, how do you migrate? What do you do about all the things that quiver?”

“He did live in the future, right up until he began to live in the past. When I think of it that way, he was a migrant through and through”

Where is home? a compelling intergenerational tale investigating identity, migration and homeland. A young woman, third generation migrant, is torn between her identity as a modern Danish woman and her idealized family identity as a Faroese descendant, a mute, frail, invisible legacy. Her recollection and reflections mingle with the stories of her grandparents and parents – stories which are the thread that make up her ties to this Ithaca of the soul, ever longed for and ever elusive, and help her reconnect. The narration is beautiful, from the atmospheric descriptions of the rugged landscapes and interiors crystallised in time to the wonderful storytelling in which nature gives birth to legends and people become mythical protagonists of family sagas. Her analysis of the painful, confused condition of migrant is poignant and thought-provoking. A fragmentary, loose structure that is not always easy to follow but interesting and evocative.

My thanks to Pushkn Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen (Translated from Danish by Caroline Waight).

⭐⭐⭐.5/5

Synopsis: "A young Danish woman explores her family's past and Faroe Islands ancestry across three generations. In the process she uncovers details of the passions and challenges her grandparents and their siblings confronted when they were her age, and considers universal themes of home and identity."

⛰️🌊⛰️🌊⛰️🌊⛰️

I have never read a book like this before. The story is so linked to the geography of the region that it is set, and the constant presence of landscape, culture and political history has left me feeling a bit Faroese myself.

"Foreignness is inherited, I wanted to say: It's packed away for the next generation. Then I let it go."

Although there were many things I really enjoyed about this book, I found the pace very slow (nothing really HAPPENS in the novel). I do understand why it was this way, and it has something more to do with the way of life on the Faroe islands, but I would have really loved a bit more going on, especially in the parts when the narrator went back in time to explore their family history.

I have to note however that the translation of this novel was done brilliantly (not that I speak Danish) - I genuinely never found that anything was 'lost in translation' and thought some of the author's phrasings were so beautifully written.

"Every night it broke the surface, and if you were lucky you might see it: the island roaring up towards the sky, up out of nothing, water pouring off in streams."

This is a unique novel about family, home, and identity.

Thanks to @pushkin_press for approving me to read a digital copy of this book via @netgalley.

The book is very reflective, ideas based and pretty much plotless, so if that is not your thing, don’t pick it up. However, if you like the idea of “In memory of memory” by Maria Stepanova, this might appeal to you. Personally, I was interested in the fact that it is based on the Faroe Islands, and that it explores ideas of home. The writing is very atmospheric and it made engage with the book more. But I found the discussions of home a bit cliche and I would have preferred it to have a bit more plot.

Having heard some good feedback on this book I was intrigued to read this book. However I struggled to get into and understand this story and ultimately gave up so this was a 'did not finish' for me.

It is however well written and I can see why others found it absorbing. May be my read taste isn't sophisticated enough to enjoy it..

3,5

Part of the reason I wanted to read this was to learn more about the Faroer Islands. And I did.

Paradoxically however, it were the constant little historical lectures and cultural anecdotes that I found to annoyingly interfere with the main narrative: Faroese saga's, Faroese politics, but also the local power plant, the local football team, the local statue.

The main storyline is the well-written story of the author's grandparents' immigration to Denmark in the 1930s. I enjoyed that very much. The intertwined storyline of the author's visit with her parents was less interesting to me, a bit too poetic a mix of myths and memories.

So, definitely a good book by a good writer but it somehow does not completely satisfy. I would probably have preferred telling the story in a more traditional, chronological way.

It was a little hard for me to tell when Marita was Marita and not Omma unless the Tarantula happened to be present. Siri seemed quite odd in her telling of her mother and her husband and her affair prior to her wedding, that all I'll say about it. I liked her telling about the floating islands and their different starts and finishes. The Faroe Islands and Denmark was another brief tale and the WWII was another tale. Everything was a brief but loving story about Siri's family, but was fiction.

Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen was born into the third generation of a Faroese family living in Copenhagen. There are many autobiographical elements that I noticed during the course of reading Island. It’s a short book, but it gives an interesting ethnographical depiction of someone trying to find her identity as a young Danish woman who traces her roots in the Faroe Islands. The unnamed narrator describes the difficulties of migration, even between Faroe Islands and Denmark which are two places that still belong to the Scandinavian sphere, and basically two entities that are constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark.

At first, it was a bit difficult for me to follow the story, as it does not follow the usual three-act structure. Rather, the timeline jumps frequently between the time Marita and Abbe—the narrator’s grandparents migrated from the Faroe Islands in the event after the end of the Second World War and the present moment after the passing of Marita. Following this structure, the stage is set to explore the complexities experienced by first-generation migrants who pave the structure, second-generation migrants who already possess some degree of assimilation into the local culture, and third-generation migrants who—in theory—should be fully assimilated. But it does not seem the case with the narrator who seems conflicted about her identity with extended family members still claiming to be Faroese in an environment where Danish is predominantly spoken.

This is not the kind of story that I’d enjoy in fictional style, as it leaves me hanging on throughout the story with its ambiguous structure. Family history could be told in the form of either a memoir or a fictionalised account such as this, however, it strikes me as a too-personal story for fiction. There is no major conflict, as the conflict itself is built into some sort of threads that continue to tangle throughout the story, and this might be the reason why it’s difficult to retain focus on reading this book.

The author particularly highlights many mundane details of everyday life, such as the Faroese and the Danish habits that the narrator particularly finds strange. An example of this would be how she finds it terribly difficult to memorise the names and positions in the family tree of some of her extended family members, which I could relate to some extent as I grew up in a similar environment. There are also many other descriptions of the complexities of a person's situation growing up with multiple identities and languages. Sometimes even migration inside the same country which is governed by the same political actors could also result in an identity crisis such as in the case of the narrator’s experience.

I find the prose beautiful, even though this is a work in translation. The sentences read like poetry, that I think Caroline Waight has put major efforts to render the English translation into something close to the original. Besides that, there are also many vernaculars from Faroese and Danish that are put into sentences without making the story losing its context, something that needs to be praised. This book would be an enjoyable treat to be read in a single sitting, considering the length and the way it’s being presented as a story without a three-act structure. If you enjoy reading the geographical and ethnographical description of a place, or simply want to know more about the Faroe Islands, this will be an interesting read.

I found Island a surprisingly absorbing story - I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect to read this so quickly! It is a compelling description of the stories that are told about 'home' and 'family', what it means to different people within and between generations, and the stories families tell each other and which are inherited by younger generations.

It took a few pages to get used to the switching of time periods, but I found it a really interesting way of illustrating the older generation's experiences from when they were a similar age to the narrator (a grandchild of a couple who emigrated from the Faroes to Denmark). It gave them the opportunity to tell their own story and highlighted the differences between the generational experiences.

I found a lot to reflect on in Island. What does 'home' mean, and who really feels 'at home'? Does feeling 'at home' really matter? As an aside, I also really enjoyed being taken back to the beautiful Faroes!

Island is a fascinating story of a Danish woman's connection with her Faroese family and culture. The story follows multiple generations and is told in two main time frames: the narrator in the present and her grandmother's experience leaving the Faroe Islands and immigrating to Denmark.

At first, the story felt somewhat convoluted, with the stories intertwining between present and past and the characters talking mainly about previous memories. Before really knowing the characters, I had a bit of difficulty knowing exactly when and who was being discussed.

That said, any struggles I had were ultimately worth dealing with because the story unfolds beautifully. The descriptions of her homeland, the uncomfortable interactions with relatives, the emotions around death, family, and homecoming. It all blended together into a powerful statement about the meaning of "home" and the stories we tell about and around it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for providing me this book to review.

Like Greenland, the Faroe Islands are a constituent country of Denmark, and this text tells the story of one Faroese family that, between the 1930s and now, is torn between the "Island" and Denmark. The focus is on the generation of the grandparents, and while in the afterword, Jacobsen stresses that her real grandparents were people, not characters in a novel, the text is at least inspired by the author's own biography, as she herself is a Danish writer whose family hails from the Faroes.

The book consists of two narrative strands: In the present time, the narrator travels to the islands with her parents after the passing of her omma and abbe, to go home (the mother) or to explore her roots (the narrator). As the father, referred to as "the tarantula", is Danish, he is a foreigner, a tourist from the colonial power (apparently, there actually IS a tarantula-like spider native to Denmark). In the second narrative strand, we learn about the story of the grandparents: Fritz, the narrator's grandfather, went to Denmark to make something of himself, his wife Marita followed in 1939. We hear about the German occupation, the destiny of the immigrants, and the relation to the family back on the Faroes ("This isn't Europe. This is the Faroe Islands.").

All of this could make for a captivating read, but unfortunately, the specific culture and social climate of the Faroe Islands doesn't really come to life. Colonialsm and the immigrant experience remain vaguely rendered, and while there are mentions of Faroese artists (Ruth Smith Nielsen and Gianfranco Nonne), the whole thing doesn't quite come together. It also doesn't make sense that the narrator is more or less omniscient: It's not only impossible, it also contradicts the whole point of the novel, namely that she is in danger of losing contact to her cultural heritage. As she herself puts it: "The third generation is invisible, theoretical, assuming its skin matches the wallpaper - and it knows it, or it doesn't know it, but it carries the crossing within it like a loss."

So while the book is quite interesting, it also feels like a missed chance: I'd love to learn a lot more about the Faroes. Btw: If you're interested in young literature from Greenland, try Last Night in Nuuk.

There are books which easily lend themselves to film adaptations, where the energy of the narrative flows as easily in video as it does in text. Then there are books which lend themselves perhaps better to paintings, to still images or depictions. Island falls into the latter category. There isn't much of a story in this book, per se, but this brief volume is absolutely filled with instances of powerful descriptive imagery. Caroline Waight reflects Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen's prose through the prism of the english language, and what comes out is extraordinarily vivid. This should not be confused for being grand; rather, Jacobsen finds the details in the most minute and mundane aspects of everyday life and celebrates them by presenting them to us, the readers.

Island is a meditation on family and history, on the characters we imagine our loved ones to be and the characters they really are. A sense of melancholy, but not mournfulness or dreariness, pervades this book; we see the narrator grapple with their sense of identity and situate it in the context of their family. Characters like Marita, Ragnar, great-aunt Ingrun, and the Tarantula are particular standouts and are among the most memorable figures in the book.

I feel like I should have more to say about Island, but I don't. It's a fairly quick read (I started and finished it in an afternoon), and the figurative language and imagery is outstanding, but I don't know if I'm super eager to re-read it. That being said, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something a little different, or to someone seeking inspiration on crafting metaphors, similes, or other descriptors.

“I wanted to say something about assimilation, that assimilation is a methodical loss of memory. I wanted to ask about parties, Christmas dinners, birthdays, the moment, if she knew it, when an aunt, a cousin, turned towards her and switched into Danish, the moment of becoming a guest in one’s own family, a blood guest.”

This novel by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen, first published in 2016 and translated here from the original Danish by Caroline Waight, centres of three generations of a Faroese family. The narrator is a young woman who, following the recent death of her grandmother, returns for a visit to the Faroe Islands - to see family and visit the places that have been important to them.

Her grandfather emigrated to Denmark in the 1930s, to escape a life of working on fishing boats, with her grandmother following after him. The story is not heavily plot-driven, but consists of various episodes in the life of the family, moving back and forth between the young woman, and her grandparents’ and parents’ generations.

An important theme of the book is that of ‘home’, and what this means for the generations that follow those that choose to go somewhere new. The narrator describes herself and her mother as guests in their own family when they visit the Faroes, and it’s interesting to consider the dissonance of thinking of a place as home that isn’t the place you have spent the greater portion of your life.

The book is beautifully written, and feels almost more like poetry than prose, particularly in the descriptions of the Faroe Islands - their geography, weather and people. An interesting and lyrical book that examines the concepts of family and home.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Pushkin Press and of course the author for providing an advanced ebook copy.