A Fist or a Heart

A prop artist’s long-suppressed memories rise to the surface when she encounters a young writer struggling to free herself from a domestic morass in this gripping, often surprising novel, Eiríksdottír’s English-language debut. Elín Jónsdottír is in her 70s and living in Reykjavík; she’s an accomplished maker of props for television shows and films that share “the same old fixation, varying levels of guilt in regard to the abuse of a girl-child.” Elín takes a job making props for a new play by Ellen Álfsdóttir, the 19-year-old daughter of famous writer Álfur Finnsson, because she’s curious about Ellen, whose first play is praised even before it opens. In reality, Ellen is a troubled, lonely misfit who was raised by her increasingly delusional mother after Finnsson died from drinking. Yet the solitary, bristly Elín is drawn to Ellen, perhaps because her story reminds Elín of her own fatherless childhood, and of a dark episode that shaped her entire life. Moving between Elín’s recollections of studying art in the 1960s and traveling abroad in the ’80s, and Ellen’s present-day meetings with boys she meets online, the book offers readers insight into the draws and dangers of solitude; thinking of a John Waters film, Elín reflects that “someone else’s fingerprints constrict your existence. There’s nothing particularly charitable or charming about it, but it’s human.” Eiríksdottír’s novel is both intelligent and affecting. (Sept.)