Praise
A seamless mix of folklore and quotidian details . . . Readers will be transported.
In Laxness, the boundary collapses between inward and outward. Nowhere is this more on display than in the novel A Parish Chronicle . . . Surely one of the reasons A Parish Chronicle feels like a high-fidelity representation of Laxness’s soul is because he grew up [in Mosfell Valley] and knows the history in the marrow of his bones . . . I can think of no better introduction to the entire oeuvre of Laxness.
— Will Chancellor, The Brooklyn Rail
[A Parish Chronicle] is filled with some of the strangest characters Laxness ever gave us (and there are many, believe me), and with events that on the surface are so mundane that they would normally not demand attention, let alone be written about. Yet Laxness’s able hand pushes the pen until they are infused with tender mystery that makes us care for them all.
— Sjón, 4Columns
A Parish Chronicle is a late vein of Laxnessism, as free of his previous ideological entanglements as he could make it. Here, he’s as humane as ever, as interested in human folly, but now much less interested in correcting it. It is the work of a writer with nothing to prove, only to tell. It looks from the outside like a modest book. It turns out to be a major book in the grandness of its modesty.
— Salvatore Scibona
I’m currently reading and enjoying A Parish Chronicle, by the Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, which just came out in English for the first time. It’s about sheepherders and a stubborn church that just won’t quit. It is, as I’m sure you can already guess, hilarious.
— Lauren Harris, The New Yorker
A Parish Chronicle draws on all Laxness’ signature themes: Icelandic culture and tradition; the ambivalent inheritance of the Sagas; small lives lived against the merciless current of history. His wry, laconic voice is as unmistakable here as it is inimitable . . . [Laxness] turns his attention to the ephemera of the everyday, burnishing them in memory so that—like the Mosfell church—they are never fully lost but always ripe for resurrection.
— Justin Taylor, Harvard Review
Laxness' protagonists are independent-minded and strong-willed—if also, to varying degrees odd-ball. A Parish Chronicle is, like many of his novels, a loving portrait of Iceland.
— M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
[ A Parish Chronicle] is my first encounter with Halldór Laxness and I am inclined to think it is as good a place to start as any. Especially with the excellent introduction to the varied and shifting nature of the Icelandic master’s oeuvre . . . The narrative tone of A Parish Chronicle rests on an irresistible sly, understated humor that runs throughout . . . a thoroughly entertaining story.
— Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts
Laxness is a beacon in twentieth-century literature, a writer of splendid originality, wit, and feeling.
— Alice Munro
Laxness brought the Icelandic novel out from the sagas' shadow…to read Laxness is also to understand why he haunts Iceland—he writes the unearthly prose of a poet cased in the perfection of a shell of plot, wit, and clarity.
— The Guardian
Laxness detonates some sentences like little bombs . . . Others he lets expand and accumulate to reveal an almost Dickensian delight in people and their idiosyncrasies.
— Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books
Laxness is a poet who writes to the edges of the pages, a visionary who allows us a plot.
— Daily Telegraph
Laxness habitually combines the magical and the mundane, writing with grace and a quiet humor that takes awhile to notice but, once detected, feels ever present…[A]ll his narratives…have a strange and mesmerizing power, moving almost imperceptibly at first, then with glacial force.
— Richard Rayner, LA Times
One quality that makes Laxness’s novels so morally uplifting is their air of tender but urgent gratitude. While his tone can vary widely from book to book…the reader consistently feels that the books are conceived in a spirit of homage; they are some of the world’s most substantial thank-you notes.
— Brad Leithauser, The New York Review of Books
