When We Were Vikings

I give this four stars because it is hard to put down and easy to read. I don't give it five stars because I still have mixed feelings about it: When We Were Vikings is the first-person story of a developmentally disabled girl named Zelda, who comes from a chaotic family. Two main things left me with “mixed feelings,” and they are only mixed because I can see how despite my cringing the author actually handled these things well.

First, am I supposed to believe that the caretakers of two physically adult but mentally disabled people would encourage and enable them to have sex? This is a big subplot of the book and it was straining credulity quite a bit. Not the inappropriate conversation by the two mentally disabled characters, but the going along with it from the parents and friends. I can see a kid like the one in the book saying “I masturbate a lot” at dinner with his parents. I can't really see his mother saying it. I can see the value of this subplot for the story, but again it was just a little hard to buy into.

The second source of mixed feelings was the language used by the narrator. In this case, I could completely buy in to using simple language and the character's black-and-white, rule-based understanding of the world (in fact, her overcoming this is the plot of the book). That doesn't make it fun to read. It just came off as unsophisticated, or mannered, overly-stylized “MFA writing” that was deliberately dumbed down. It makes me wonder if the author can write something not in this style (of course he can, but this book clearly isn't the best showcase of his skills). So, I guess it was appropriate to the character and the story, but it was just a little annoying.

Last thing, and this is not just because I'm an Anglo-Saxon hobbyist and Beowulf expert: starting in the first paragraph, Beowulf is referred to as a Viking, and the poem is referred to as a Viking story. The words and imagery from Beowulf plays a crucial role in the rest of the book, and yet (I don't know if you know this) Beowulf has nothing to do with Vikings. The way this character is portrayed, she wouldn't make that mistake, and the things she's reading about Vikings certainly wouldn't make that mistake. That means it's the author's mistake, either out of pure ignorance or thinking he could pull one over on less-informed readers. This isn't a mistake anyone should be making. It's just dumb.

Overall, though, the book is over quickly, the plot is not complicated, and it's an interesting character study. It's not a huge investment, and it's compelling enough.