Thor Vilhjálmsson (1925–2011)

Justice Undone tis about a real 19th-century crime--though it's far being an historical novel and by no means a crime one--and of a magistrate's judgement upon the criminals. The plot has neither complications nor twists, and really seems the basis of rather than a reason for the book. The characters can almost all be summed up in a word or two: one is elemental, another conflicted, another still is bitter. The writing does not read smoothly and at times feels quite awkward; moreover one short passage was as difficult to take in as one from Finnegans Wake would have been (no, I haven't read it either). The organisation of the book can be confusing--it wasn't till I'd read quite a good bit that I realised that two different crimes were being referred to and that more than one version of one of those was being recounted.

The plot underlies though thorny unanswered questions about morality and conformity, magnificent descriptions of the Icelandic countryside, references to folk tales and sagas, portrayals of the brutal life led by peasants oppressed by the 'nobles', and unforgettably vivid dreams. And it seems almost as if we're being shown the essence of the characters, who are anything but one-dimensional.

It was the writing style that I found most difficult to adjust to. Vilhjalmsson writes in a fairly conventional straightforward way when dealing with concrete matters like the hearing in court and at other times employs devices that aren't new to me: He's elliptical, uses sentence fragments, leaves unclear for awhile what a phrase or sentence refers to. But his diction is sometimes so odd that it stopped me dead in my tracks--a voice like 'a stalactite' is an example. On stopping to re-read such a phrase though I would usually see that it was in fact metaphorical--in this instance, for a singer's groping for and then grasping of a very low note--and in the end I enjoyed being jolted by the way words were used.

A rich and rewarding book.… (more)