aww this one broke my heart a few times. Very sparse but interesting. Loved it. Many thanks to publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is a deep dive into relationships, memories, first loves, and the cultural differences that sometimes interfere with the expression of emotions. I was along for every single moment and the writing was touching and lovely. I confess this was a heavier and more emotional read than I usually go for during this time of year, but I was drawn in from the beginning and didn't want to put this book down. There is certainly sadness to this story, but there is so much beauty as well.

In Olaf Olafsson’s Touch, during COVID, Reykjavik restaurateur 74 year-old Kristófer must close his popular and once successful business. He tried to adapt with delivery and takeaway services, but his attempts have failed and the twenty-year-old restaurant is no longer viable. The novel opens with Kristófer finalizing financial matters for the restaurant, paying bills, paying staff. He checks Facebook and there finds a friend request, which he accepts, from Miko Takahashi, a woman he knew, loved and lost more than 40 years before. …


Perhaps thinking he has nothing to lose, and perhaps because he wants to find out why Miko disappeared from his life, Kristófer decides to fly to Japan to see her. She has COVID, was hospitalized but is now home, and Kristófer books his flight without telling his hostile brother Mundi or his prickly stepdaughter Sonja. Over the course of the novel, it becomes clear that these are both problematic relationships.

Kristófer has a stop in London, and uses the time to visit the scene of the crime–the place where he met Miko, whose father owned a small but successful Japanese restaurant. Part of the novel is a trip down memory lane–an easy to understand action–so Kristófer stands outside of what was once the restaurant and finds instead a tattoo parlour. Talk about getting a sense of one’s own mortality. All this brings back memories for Kristófer. As a student studying Economics he was infected with the 60s bug, and aware of his own lack of interest inn his studies and haunted by the spectre of mediocrity, he dropped out of university and in a moment of sheer bravado decide to enter the restaurant business.

Touch is the examination of a depressing life filled with regretted decisions. There’s Kristófer’s spur-of-the moment decision to begin a restaurant career, his tepid marriage to his now dead wife, Inga, and his dis-spiriting intellectually intimidating relationship with fellow student Jói. The passage of time hammers a bitter reality into these decisions–simultaneously magnifying and diminishing their importance. But the central mystery here is why Miko disappeared.

We are in the midst of a global pandemic. I closed my restaurant and traveled halfway across the world. What for? To get back what never existed? To make myself feel better–to search for something that will justify my life?

For this reader, the most interesting sections of the novel explored Kristófer’s flawed personal relationships. He somehow managed to bypass understanding his now-dead wife’s inner life, which goes a long way to explaining his annoying stepdaughter’s alienation. He managed to miss his faithful long-term employee’s dream. Kristófer’s renewed contact with Miko was the least interesting part of the novel, which is unfortunate as it is central. This may be due to my failing/quirk as a human being who fails to see/questions the advisability of picking up a social media friend request from someone who dumped you 40 years before. But perhaps that’s just me. …I’m more of a ‘let sleeping dogs lie,’ ‘the past is a foreign country,’ ‘you made your bed...’ kind of person. Call that living in the moment.

Review copy

Touch is a beautiful & heartbreaking love story that has spanned decades despite the road life took Kristofer and Miko on. The story is told through the pandemic and while Kristofer's doctor is also concerned about his mind. We get the full story from then to now and it left me gutted. This probably wouldn't usually cross my radar, but I'm so glad it did. Sometimes we just need to be reminded that love will always find a way, if it's meant to be!!

Thank you Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

It's March of 2020, and the world is on the brink of a pandemic when 75-year-old Kristófer is forced to close down his successful restaurant in Reykjavík. Feeling unmoored in his life and worried about the ever-increasing gaps in his memory, Kristófer is trying to decide what to do next when he receives a message out of the blue from Miko, the woman he'd loved and lost more than 50 years before. Seeking the answers to decades-old questions, he decides to travel to Miko in Japan, by way of London where their love story had its start, just as the world is beginning to shut down.

Set against the backdrop of an uncertain world, Touch is a quiet, contemplative, character-driven story about memory, aging, and the importance of emotional connection. Rather than a straightforward back-and-forth timeline, it weaves seamlessly between the past and present as Kristófer's memory dictates, as he meditates on his past experiences and relationships and his own mortality. Kristófer has a mesmerizing, conversational voice that immediately endeared me to him. The overall tone of the story is pensive and thoughtful, but there are gentle moments of lightness and humor too.

It's relatively short, but Touch is an incredibly textured and expansive novel, touching on themes of war and prejudice, isolation, cultural differences, complicated family dynamics, and illness, and exploring the ways in which food is tied so strongly to memory. But at its heart, Touch is a book about first love and second chances, and I'm just going to say it: It touched me.

This was a smoothly translated and propulsively readable novel, but I found it extremely contrived. and shallow. Kristofer is an Icelandic 75-year-old who owns a fine-dining restaurant in Reykjavik, and makes an impulsive decision to close it down and travel to Japan at the onset of the Covid-19 epidemic to reconnect with a long-lost lover.

His journey from Iceland to London to Tokyo to Hiroshima gives him the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, just as his own memory is fading with the onset of dementia. Kristofer's recollections circle around the retelling of a doomed affair with Miko, a Japanese university student, during the summer of 1969, when he worked at one of the few Japanese restaurants in London (Yes, the locals mistake this long-haired hippie and his girlfriend for John Lennon and Yoko Ono).

Olafsson focuses on describing the most obvious aspects of Japanese culture and history-- ramen, sushi, and haiku-- and has nothing new to say about the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Miko and Takahashi-san, her father and his boss, are not especially credible human beings, and are occasionally reduced to cultural stereotypes. And Olafsson resolves the plot's mysteries, such as they are, with mechanical contrivances, stooping to extreme depths of sentimentality.

4 stars

I am grateful to the publisher Ecco for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.

Lately I have been enjoying stories like this, where the focus is on memories and unraveling unresolved past events that have impacted characters’ entire lives. This is a simple story about relationships and how cultural differences impact the way in which they develop. In this story we follow an old man who; upon hearing from someone who he has been out of contact with for most of his adult life; is now thinking back to all the things, places, and events that tied them together. In this story we journey with this character as he seeks answers? Closure? Possibilities?...

This story also puts a lot of emphasis on historical events . For me, that was a bit unexpected. Even though I knew that culture was going to play a part in the story, I did not expect the emphasis on how certain historical events impacted Japanese society. It was interesting reading a story from an Icelandic author, set mostly in Reykjavik and London, and spoke so much about Japanese history. I also like the way in which the author tied everything together and how the story unraveled, and the layers and complexities were revealed as the character journeyed closer and closer to his destination at the end of the story. I feel like the conclusion to this story may not be satisfying to everyone, but I think the way in which it was so brief and clean really complemented the way the story was told and the reflective nature of our character perspective.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was quiet, reflective, and very satisfyingly written. I would recommend this to fans of contemporary fiction as well as cultural and historical stories.

This was such a sweet story and a unique fictional love letter. When the pandemic starts Kristofer closes his restaurant for good and embarks on a journey to be reunited with his lover that disappeared years ago. It's told in alternating timelines as Kristofer remembers what happened leading up to Miko's disappearance. The pandemic setting adds a nice layer of a deadline because you know international travel is about to be really hard. Kristofer's musings about how his lost love impacted the rest of his life was lovely. It was refreshing to read a story told through the lens of an aging narrator.

Thank you Ecco Books and NetGalley for the ARC of this one.

After reading Olaf Olafsson’s The Sacrament, I eagerly requested an ARC of his latest novel Touch. Although it is difficult to imagine two such different novels by the same author, I cannot help feeling this is one important sign of a good writer—one clearly not trying to recreate what worked last time, one ready to try something new and capable of succeeding.

Touch is the story of 74-year-old Icelander Kristófer Hannesson, a widower who has decided to close his Reykjavik restaurant for good during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Determined to leave everything in order, he has written and revised his to-do list. He thinks about the wedding party he last hosted and the “last supper” with his employees. After spending time paying salaries and bills and contacting creditors to request that they expedite final billing, he settles in with his coffee to check the latest online pandemic news and notices a Facebook friend request from a name that causes decades to melt away, leaving him standing by a locked door and realizing those who should have been inside have unexpectedly disappeared.
Miko Nakamura has sent the request, giving her maiden name as Takahashi and asking if he is the Kristófer Hannesson who had lived in London in 1969.

From here, the book moves back and forth between Kristófer’s present and past. One moment he is planning his trip to Japan, debating whether he will pack his teacup, pondering how he will explain his sudden departure to his step-daughter, flying to London where he will catch a flight to Japan, and worrying about threatened flight cancellations due to the rising coronavirus cases. As Kristófer packs and travels, his mind returns to his university days in London, his university friends, his decision to drop out of school, and the pressures that resulted in his entering a Japanese restaurant to take a job as a dishwasher, a huge step down from his role as student in the prestigious London School of Economics.

Kristófer has no idea why Miko and her father, the Japanese restaurant owner, suddenly locked their restaurant doors and vanished. Now he is the one with a secret. Miko had sent him a simple friend request. He has not told her he is coming to Japan.

Although this scenario might sound far-fetched, Olaf Olafsson managed to convince me through his clever depiction of the workings of Kristófer Hannesson’s mind.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco/Harper Collins Publishers for an advance reader copy of this charming new novel.

A beautifully written tale of a man looking back on his life and one particular relationship. Lovely insights into Icelandic and Japanese cultures. Highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about different cultures and gaining insights into political histories.

I was so delighted to read a domestic drama that is not a light rom com but which ends on a happy and hopeful note. The sensitivity of the main characters is essential to this novel and it pulls you into a story of the love between two people from very different backgrounds, of love lost, and a mystery that ends with surprises.

An enjoyable read about an unusual love that spans many years.

Another favorite author does his covid novel, and it's perfect. All the elements are lined up here for this 70+ year old reader. The surprising elements of aging, cognitive decline and a rich past that comes knocking in a surprising twist that propels our protagonist on a quest for understanding and, perhaps, restored love?

The more I read, the deeper I was involved. Touch, yes, touched me on a deep level. 75-year-old restaurateur Kristofer who finds his memory is failing wakes during the early days of the pandemic to a facebook message from the woman who never left his heart over fifty years ago. While he has trouble recounting his starter menus, part of his daily memory exercise, his memories of 1969 are crystal clear, and he soon finds himself flying to Japan. What follows is a totally involving exploration of memory, love, determination, and, told in alternating chapters, an answer to a mystery that has haunted Kristofer for all that time.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

"Kristofer receives a message from Miko, a woman whom he'd known in the sixties when they were students in London and he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life."

An okay read and I liked the Nordic setting. But it felt like a stretch for an elderly man to just pick up and go across the country during a pandemic.

3☆

Wonderful creative story from Olaf Olafsson. His plot structure is supberb. Highly recommend this book but keep plenty of time so you don't have to put it down.

So beautifully written I didn't want it to end! The author has a rare talent in putting words together in a way that is both peaceful and intriguing - his sentences just pull the reader along. I really didn't want the story to end. Olafson is now on my favorite author list!

This book was quiet and lovely, just like Olaf's other books. There was a tension throughout it that made you want to keep reading despite a slow-paced more internal focus. The ending was perfect.

An absorbing story of a life lived and the memories that permeate the present.
Kristofer is a seventy five year old man who in the early days of the pandemic has decided to close his restaurant.
With that decision, he recollects the building of his career and when he met Miko during their student years. She was his great love and she left suddenly fifty years ago. When Miko reaches out via Facebook, he is pulled back into her orbit. Amidst the trials of lockdown. he decides to travel to Japan to reunite with her.
Equal parts love story and mystery, Olaf Olaffson keeps the reader compelled as he peels back the layers of life, love, friendships, aging and the eternal affect on one’s heart.
Shared in dual timelines this is as engaging as it is beautiful. Aptly titled this will touch your mind, heart and soul long after the final page has been read.
Highly recommended with thanks to NetGalley, the author and Ecco Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review.

TOUCH is a quietly mesmerizing novel perfect for fans of literary fiction.

Our 75-year-old narrator comes across as genuine and immediately likable. He is concerned with the pandemic and closing his restaurant. Faced with the prospect of declining mental facilities, he is an enthusiastic keeper of lists. Even at great risk to himself, he wants to do the right thing, especially when a voice from his past re-emerges.

The decades-old love story at the center of the narrative is beautifully conveyed. Olafsson handles the movement back and forth in time seamlessly. I never felt that the pacing suffered as we learned what came before the present-day. There is a peaceful quality to the novel. While there is certainly forward momentum, the plot is not showy or loud, but rather gently leads the reader along a journey.

Readers looking for a nostalgic, poignant story of what love means will enjoy TOUCH.

I was not previously familiar with Olaf Olafsson's work, though I now intended to read his backlist.

I had read and admired Olaf Olafsson’s previous novel, “Sacrament,” so I had high expectations for “Touch,” and it easily exceeded them. I loved absolutely everything about this book, from the mesmerizing voice of seventy-five-year-old narrator Kristófer Hannesson, to the dual timelines following the events of his life in Reykjavik in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, when he is shuttering his restaurant, and in London in 1969, when he meets and falls in love with Miko, the Japanese girl who disappeared without a trace and who Kristófer has never forgotten. As the events of these two timelines unfold in simple but beautiful prose, Olafsson builds a quiet sense of suspense which culminates in an almost simultaneous moment of loss and redemption that brings the book to its emotional climax. “Touch” is at its most basic level a love story, and a memorable one at that—but it is so much more. I will be pressing this one into the hands of pretty much everyone I know.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Ecco for providing me with an ARC of this title.