Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.03.2014, Blaðsíða 21

21
Words
Larissa Kyzer
A False Version
Of The Truth
'Season Of The Witch' by Árni Þórarinsson,
translated by Anna Yates
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Literature
REVIEW
Issue 3 — 2014
When we meet Einar, a seasoned Reyk-
javík crime reporter, at the opening of
Árni Þórarinsson’s ‘Season of the Witch,’
he—much like the country around him—
is in the midst of great change, and he’s
not terribly happy about it. It’s the early
2000s, Iceland’s pre-crash boom years,
and given the choice of “the whiskey or
the work,” Einar begrudgingly accepts
banishment to the paper’s new Akurey-
ri headquarters in North Iceland, where
industrial growth has begun to drasti-
cally alter the texture of village life.
But while Einar can’t escape the more
banal aspects of provincial journal-
ism—such as ask-a-local “Question of
the Day” segments and articles about
lost dogs—he soon finds that this small
community has more than enough
murder and violent crime to make for
worthy headlines.
Originally published in 2005, ‘Sea-
son of the Witch’ is a tightly-plotted
portrait of Iceland before everything
went wrong, born of what the author
has said was “an increasing sense of
unease about my country.” As he re-
marked in an interview, “I felt we were
quickly losing our traditional values and
way of life to a new kind of value sys-
tem… I'm talking about egotism, greed,
and a lack of respect for things that
can't be bought and sold.” This self-
serving attitude of, as Árni put it, “I do
it because I can,” resonates through-
out the novel’s three intertwining plot
lines: the murder of the charismatic
lead actor in a high school production
of ‘Loftur the Sorcerer,’ the increasingly
violent activities of a trio of well-con-
nected small-town troublemakers, and
the death of a local woman who every-
one—with the exception of the victim’s
elderly mother—thinks was nothing but
an unfortunate accident.
In his stodgy resistance to change—
to everything from the fact that he’s ex-
pected to carry a cell phone and use a
laptop for work, to the enforcement of
indoor smoking bans—Einar exempli-
fies this sense of unease, but that isn’t
to say that he, or the novel, is pushing
for an all out return to the ‘good old
days.’ Rather, his kvetching and sus-
picion have some credibility because
they are balanced with self-awareness
and compassion—the desire to become
a better person and, when necessary,
even embrace the changing times. The
best example of this is illustrated with
his own sheepish admission that he
was initially shocked when his daugh-
ter brought home a black boyfriend. “It
opened my eyes to my own prejudices,”
he says. “I’m doing my best to grow up.”
While the novel is by no means
styled as a thriller, it is immensely en-
gaging due in equal measure to its
simple and fluid prose style as to Einar’s
incisive, if occasionally caustic, obser-
vations about goings-on around town,
the less glamorous aspects of life as a
journalist, and the suspect motivations
of the people around him. The story’s
secondary characters also flourish
throughout the narrative—from Einar’s
floundering, beleaguered boss and his
immensely capable friend and pho-
tographer Jóa to the pensive younger
brother of the murdered teenager—
each adding further layers of richness
to the story and scene.
Resonating in the background is
also the real life town of Reyðarfjörður,
once a small fishing village but home to
the Alcoa Fjardaál aluminium smelter
since 2004. Árni thinly disguises the
town as “Reydargerdi” in the novel
(interestingly, as other towns, such
as Akureyri and Hólar, keep their real
names). The characters debate aspects
of such developments in the regions—
new industry in a previously declining
area, new investment capital, an influx
of foreign workers, continuing popula-
tion drain to Reykjavík—although the
book doesn’t come to any real con-
clusion about the “aluminum plant or
steelworks or some such infernal mon-
strosity,” perhaps because, don’t forget,
the Alcoa plant hadn’t been completed
when the novel was first published.
Although themes of good and evil
run through the novel—emphasised
by quoted passages from the ‘Lof-
tur’ play—by and large, ‘Season of the
Witch’ does not end with any black and
white moral declarations, but rather
finds its justice somewhere in the grey
area. As Einar asks during an interview,
“Isn’t it a fine line between acting re-
sponsibly and presenting a false, or at
least edited, version of the truth? Isn’t
that a matter of responsibility, too?”
It’s the early 2000s,
Iceland’s pre-crash
boom years, and given
the choice of “the
whiskey or the work,”
Einar begrudgingly ac-
cepts banishment to the
paper’s new Akureyri
headquarters.