Independent People
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author: a magnificent novel that recalls Iceland's medieval epics and classics, set in the early twentieth century starring an ordinary sheep farmer and his heroic determination to achieve independence. • "A strange story, vibrant and alive…. There is a rare beauty in its telling." —Atlantic Monthly If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to free himself is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.
Featured Series
1 primary bookSjálfstætt fólk is a 0-book series first released in 1934 with contributions by Halldór Laxness and James Anderson Thompson.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book is beautiful. Depressing, bleak, and beautiful.
Pride. Pride has been the topic of beautiful and deep conversations with friends, some still ongoing. It's a multifaceted word, hard to talk about because of its many meanings. It's also an important and necessary part of the balance we humans must keep.
Cruelty. Not a word I'd ever associated with pride, but now I may never be able to look at pride the same way. Some may see Independent People as a book about sheep, or perhaps the Icelandic ethos, or about struggle. I found heartbreak. Some parts hurt to read. Physically hurt. Gut level. And it kept hurting more.
Bjartur of Summerhouses wants to be independent. Own his land, be indebted to nobody, be strong. This need, this pride drives him to an isolation that is especially pathetic because he isn't even aware of it. Unseeing, he drives away love and hope and promise. The dumbstruck reader is with him every cruel step of the way. And perhaps, at the end, seeing independence in a different light.
Finally finished Independent People today.
I wonder how many times I read some version of Bjartur's statement of his
philosophy: “Independence is the most important thing of all in life.” (p.31)
Independent man struggles to survive in Iceland in the early part of the 20th century. Recommended.
