Henning Mankell - 'The Shadow Girls' and beyond.

Death is not what is frightening to me, not the fact that the light goes out, but this fact that we are going to be dead so very long.






It is almost exactly fifteen months ago that Henning Mankell passed away. The literary world is a lesser place for him not being here anymore. Every now and then I read one of his books to remind myself how good he was. My latest venture into Mankell territory was ‘The Shadow Girls’ which I have just finished. Given the plight of refugees all over Europe today and the ongoing conundrum of what to do about the issue it is amazing just how little has changed in the fifteen years since the book was published in English. Mankell’s ample insight into the problems of people smuggling for the sex trade and the thousands upon thousands who flee Africa every day makes me wonder why the only thing that has happened to the refugee crisis in Europe over the last decade and a half is that is a decade and a half older and a decade and a half worse. The problems with the way we attempt to deal with the crisis have not changed. I spent eight years working in a hostel that was used as emergency accommodation for asylum seekers arriving in the UK and the disillusionment at the realities of the ‘Promised Land’ and the abuse of the system that provides food and shelter to such people has reached breaking point. We are doing nothing more than creating a society of ‘non-persons’ as George Orwell once described them. An underground population of people who don’t technically exist in our country and can’t get back to their own.





“Whoever said something had to be written down on paper to be a story? The most important thing is that they are telling their stories at all.”

“You can be dead even though you’re alive and alive although you’re dead.”






‘The Shadow Girls’ is a beautifully written novel and a brilliant insight into the problems of our modern Europe. It is up to us however to fix the problems with more than tired and unfair legislation and insufficient funds. We deny people their asylum applications because we cannot afford them and in many cases we do not deport them for the same reason. The problem has become one of financial concerns and governments refuse to look at these people as people but instead look at them as one side of an already bursting public spending ledger. They simply become stuck at the point that they enter the system with no opportunity of breaking free. They simply swap one set of chains for another. If George Orwell only knew just how right he was.

Awesome new review of 'A Place To Bury Strangers'.

"Nicol's dark, time-shifting narrative is masterful and powerful. Subterranean and uncontrollable forces––greed, desire, loneliness, addiction––transport the characters who populate Reykjavik's back streets to often fatal moments of clarity––with Iceland's most dangerous and elemental geographic locations as backdrop--the massive and seething Gullfoss; the treacherous and icy silence of the forest; the tumult of the sea. Detective Grímur Karlsson, deadened by failure and by solitude, literally falls into the most important and dangerous case of his career, the vanishing of a prostitute into the night. But finding the missing girl reveals more than locating a body. Along the way Grímur discovers that he, too, is disposable, and that light comes from the most unlikely places."

First review of 'A Place To Bury Strangers'

Having read and enjoyed Nicol's 'On a Small Island' and 'The Mistake', I was eager to read 'A Place to Bury Strangers'. The title alone was enticing but the first events - a grizzly death, our anti-hero, Detective Grímur Karlsson injured and a young girl escaping into the cold, dark night hooked me into the story. Add a Norwegian phrase at the Reykjavík crime scene - "I have found the place where you bury strangers" - and the police have their eye on a known Norwegian enforcer. Ævar, Grímur's boss (who is keen for the aging, difficult Grímur to retire) and Grímur differ on the approach to take with the Norwegian.

Pay attention to the date heading each chapter. Once I figured that out, I was able to follow the back and forth of events which slowly revealed character motivations. Ævar needed to solve the murder, Grímur was searching for a young woman, Svandís who had disappeared, Knut the Norwegian had his own agenda and all events move along in parallel until it becomes clear how they intersect.

Top marks to Nicol for the ending - it surprised me.

'On A Small Island' almost three years on.... review by Jo Perry.

My debut novel 'On A Small Island' will be three years old next month but thanks to my publishing deal with the wonderful Fahrenheit Press it is now starting to reach a whole new audience all over the world. I was thrilled to receive this review today from one of Fahrenheit's most talented authors, the lovely Jo Perry. Her books 'Dead Is Better' and Dead Are Best' are two of Fahrenheit's most entertaining releases so it was a thrill to hear what she thought of my debut effort.

"This masterful, chilling, and stormy Nordic noir page-turner is much more than a whodunnit. In finding the location and identity of her siblings' abductor and the murderer of her father's farm hand and beloved horse, Nicol's stubborn, brave and complex narrator and protagonist, Ylfa Einarsdóttir, must confront horrific family secrets that threaten her life and can obliterate her sense of who she is. Ylfa's identity, like that of all Icelanders, comes not from a family name and history, but is defined by a patronymic. Ylfa is Einar's daughter––her father's daughter––to the world and to herself. Who her father was and is becomes the literal and figurative darkness which she must escape to save herself. Lively, restive, fearless and promiscuous Ylfa first hunts, and then is hunted by the person or persons who has taken her sisters and who threatens her stern and distant father. Her search takes her farther and farther away from Reykjavík's comfortable mix of tradition and modernity until she, alone in Iceland's stark and bone-chilling cold landscape, must confront the uncontrollable and deadly forces of human nature. Ylfa is a wonderful mix of darkness and light, blindness and strength. And I love the way Nicol uses horses as important characters in the novel—as innocents, victims and true measures of our humanity."

http://myBook.to/SmallIsland

Welcome to Mooselandia #1

It is only been three weeks since I woke up with a hangover from my Saturday night out after Iceland Noir but it feels like a lot longer mainly because there’s been so many changes in my life since then. The biggest and most noticeably one is that I am no longer living in Iceland having called time on my stay there after two years of living in the tiny Nordic nation of imaginary elves, Sigur Rós and footballers capable of beating the English. My new haunt is Porvoo in southern Finland or Borgå if you are of the Swedish-speaking variety of Finn of which there are more than a few around here. There are always a few things to get used to when you move to a new country and one of the main ones you need to wrap your head around here is the dual-language usage. Everyone here speaks Finnish but in the south there is a large number of Swedish-speaking Finns. This is not just a small minority of people either. In some places in the south-west of the country they are actually in the majority. All the road signs here are in both languages. Finnish on top and Swedish underneath. Police cars have the word ‘Police’ written in Finnish on one side of the car and in Swedish on the other. Ambulances have the word ‘Ambulance’ on them in English only. No room for making mistakes there. Shop assistants often wear small badges on their chests with little flags indicating which languages they speak. Little Finnish flags, Swedish flags and the Union Jack are the most common ones you’ll see. Whereas in Iceland I only had one language to get to grips with – albeit one of the most complicated beasts on the planet – here I have two. I frequently find myself learning a new word in both languages at the same time. While Swedish is perhaps the simpler of the two languages to learn being more similar to English all the subtitles on TV are in Finnish and that is a great way to learn vocabulary no matter what anyone says.

Another challenge or delight in any new place is the food and here it’s pretty much all been delights so far. Even the dreaded Salmiakki which foreigners are supposed to loathe I have fallen in love with. It is Finland’s famous salty liquorice that really has to be tried to be believed.

They even have Salmiakki chocolate here as well as lemon and liquorice yoghurt which is totally amazing and apparently there’s a lemon and liquorice ice cream as well. Karelian Pies are another big thing here. They are small open-top pies made with a sort of shortcrust pastry made from rye flour and filled with rice. It’s the sort of fluffy rice that you might use in desserts. We eat them hot or cold with cream cheese on top.

Another huge thing here is the great outdoors. Where we live it is five minutes in pretty much any direction to the woods. Forest might be a better term. The trees start just behind the houses here and go on forever. They are criss-crossed with dozens of walking trails covering huge amounts of land. Some are about 3 or 4 km long while others go on for 15 or 16 km. In summer people head out to collect lingonberries and wild mushrooms for their kitchens while in winter you are more likely to come across people keeping fit out going for a walk or a run.

As the sun is pretty much gone by 3:30 in the afternoon at this time of year you can only use them fairly early in the day but there is one just down the road from here that has ‘street lights’ that wind along its entire length creating a spooky-as-hell light when they turn on.

It’s a cool way to get some exercise and it’s really easy to let your mind drift and empty itself as you wander through such breath-taking nature. The only thing you have to concern yourself with, apart from staying sufficiently warm, is moose. They live in the forests here and are generally very happy to keep out of your way which they will do if they can smell you coming and with a nose like that that happens about 99% of the time. It’s only when you surprise them apparently that they get rather upset about you being in their woods.

I haven’t seen one yet but I’m quite excited about the day that finally happens. That is after all one of the big attractions of living here in Mooselandia.