The Tricking of Freya

I love it when I'm enthused by a first novel. It is exciting to discover a new voice that you enjoy and can hope for more work from. Christina Sunley uses beautiful language. It reads well, it makes pictures in my mind and it sounds full rolling around in my mouth.

Beyond the language she tells a story about a girl that I cared about. As she tells of her childhood joys and tragedies I wanted to learn her secrets. She reveals herself and those secrets.

I recommend this book highly. ( )

The best book I've read in a long time. A puzzle easily solved, an ending that is somewhat predictable. The reader is meant to know what Freya cannot. The Tricking of Freya is a book you won't want to put down. ( )

“The Tricking of Freya” is the story of Freya Morris, daughter of sober and responsible Anna, niece of wild and unpredictable Birdie, and granddaughter of the revered poet Olafur, who fled Iceland to Canada after the massive volcano eruption of 1875. Freya grows up with her mother in Connecticut, and her extended family in the Icelandic community of Gimli, Canada. A series of events leaves Freya with a sense of shame and loss: a freak accident, Freya’s kidnapping, a return to Iceland, and the accidental discovery of a long-hidden family secret.Christina Sunley’s debut novel is filled with information about Iceland: modern-day Iceland, its history, mythology and folklore as well as Icelandic traditions, customs, food, language and landscape. The novel also touches on genealogy, mass emigration and bipolar disorder. In isolation, so much information might have been dry, perhaps difficult to assimilate, but Christina Sunley has woven it all skillfully into an engaging story about families and secrets, coming-of-age, relationships and tragedies, making it very palatable indeed.If the secret Freya is trying to uncover becomes obvious to the reader long before Freya herself solves it, this in no way detracts from the tale: if anything, the urge to follow Freya in her voyage of discovery is strengthened by it.Christina Sunley’s characters are believable and well-developed, her descriptions are evocative and she has some wonderful turns of phrase and analogies. The novel left me wanting more: more of Iceland, more of Christina Sunley. I very much enjoyed this novel. ( )

Sunley's first novel is a coming-of-age, coming-to-consciousness story told by the protagonist, Freya Morris, raised in New England by her widowed mother, but the granddaughter of the famed Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands (poet of New Iceland). Freya spends summers in Gimli, the Canadian settlement of Icelandic immigrants, as she and her mother visit her grandmother and aunt Birdie.

Freya's epistolary narration -- she is writing to an unknown cousin, a child given up at birth by Birdie -- reveals the interrelationships and conflicts among the three generations of women as she grows up. The best aspect of the novel is the weaving in of fascinating Icelandic lore -- myth, history, geography, and the all important love of the spoken and written word. While I found the characters a bit stereotypical in their personalities, Sunley's descriptive powers with landscape and place are powerful. I certainly enjoyed the book enough to look forward to see how Sunley's writing will develop in her next novel. ( )

What I can say about 'The Tricking of Freya' is that I found the story interesting, I liked the characters, and I learned enough about Iceland to think that I'd like to visit there someday. But, the book was about 100 pages longer than it really needed to be. I found parts of the novel to be tedious so I resorted to skimming paragraphs and pages at a time which is something I rarely do.

What I found most interesting was that although the 'trick' played on Freya was fairly obvious early on, I was compelled to continue reading to learn how Freya would discover that she was 'tricked'.

The storyline covers 3 generations of women and their Icelandic roots: Freya, her mother Anna, Aunt Birdie, and Sigga (Freya's grandmother and mother to Birdie and Anna). The setting takes place primarily in Gimli ("New Iceland"), Manitoba and Iceland where the author creates a visual landscape of lush, rugged terrain of volcanoes, lava fields and glaciers. (I learned that the US astronauts who landed on the moon were sent to Iceland for their training since the terrain there bears a strong resemblance to the moon).

The major premise of the story is that Freya is in search of a cousin who she has never met and travels between Gimli and Iceland where she uncovers family secrets that have shaped her life.

If you are interested in learning more about Iceland and it's people, this may be a good read for you. ( )