Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Translated by Philip Roughton
Hodder&Stoughton, 2010. £12.99 (not yet out in mass market paperback)
Having recently re-discovered the charms of the local library, I was delighted the other day to spot a copy of Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s third novel about lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir, Ashes to Dust, and snapped it up. In this novel, Thora is hired by Markus, a 50ish well-off businessman, to allow him to gain access to the basement of his old family home in the Westmann Islands. The islands were covered in lava and ash in a volcanic eruption back in the early 1970s, and the houses there abandoned until now (2007), when they are being excavated as part of an archaeological project called the Pompeii of the North. Eventually, Thora negotiates access for Markus and accompanies him into the dusty, abandoned cellar with the eager archaeologists in tow - but they make a horribly gruesome discovery. Not only this, but in the eyes of the unsympathetically portrayed local police, Markus is the person most likely to be responsible. Thora therefore finds herself both acting for Markus and trying to find out for herself what really happened all those years ago, so she can find the real perpetrator.
In a parallel plot, a woman called Alba is found dead in her bed in her house in Reykjavik. The reader is sure the two incidents must be connected, not least because Alba and Markus grew up and went to school together on the islands. At first, Alba’s death is considered to be suicide but it rapidly transpires that the woman was murdered, in quite a horrible way. (In fact the first chapter of the novel is a gruesome description of Alba’s death from the victim’s perspective, which I could both have done without and found unnecessary for the plot – the rest of the book is mild in comparison.) Alba was a nurse, both at a plastic surgery practice and at the A&E department of the town’s hospital. She left the A&E job a few days before her death under something of a cloud, and Thora finds it difficult to find out why, although the reader knows that a rather unpleasant man called Adolf is somehow involved.
The author gradually pulls all these strings together as Thora digs into the past, visiting the islands several times with the secretary from hell, Bella, to help her – this makes a refreshing change from the rather bland Matthew, who does not feature in this book apart from in a few phone calls. The best parts of the novel are when Thora interviews all the old associates and families of Markus and Alba, in which we see the way of life and concerns of those who live in these remote parts: Thora encounters resistance, partly because Markus’s family are powerful and wealthy, in effect owning the main business of the region, so people are reluctant to say anything against any of them; and partly because nobody wants to betray old confidences or reveal nasty incidents that happened so long ago and have long since escaped the notice of the police. The descriptions of the volcanic eruption are also fascinating, as villages, farms and towns became buried and everyone and their animals had to escape the best they could. (This novel was written before, but published in English after, the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull this year, which adds a level of fascination, as does the description of the Cod War from the Icelandic perspective, somewhat different from the way it was portrayed in the British press, of course.)
Readers of previous novels in this series will also know that Thora has a rather stressful personal life: she is divorced with a teenage son and young daughter. At the end of the previous novel, the son and his girlfriend had a baby, so Thora has to support them as well as struggle to keep her practice going while doing her duty by her family. She’s a charming and humorous character, and the reader is rooting for her all the way. I particularly liked her negotiation with the golf clubs. There are also lots of astute, neat touches, not least asides about attitudes to whaling and catching/eating puffins.
This having been said, I feel that at 455 pages the novel is too long and slow for its plot – and either the translation or the editing could have been a bit sharper (or even, on some occasions, grammatical). The book also cried out for a map! It is not difficult for the reader to guess the outline of what must have happened in the past to create the dilemma of the present, so the main revelation is not a surprise. Although the author creates a great atmosphere of life in Iceland, particularly on the islands, as well as providing some neat details and a nice twist in the tail, the denouement seems a long time coming. I also think that the character of Thora, in particular her domestic set-up and, in this novel, Bella, are all intriguing but under-developed. Nevertheless, this novel is superior fare: the bleak, tragic life-story of Alba in particular is extremely well told, and the subplot of Adolf and his daughter creepily telling. Yrsa Sigurdardottir is a very talented author, but I feel that she could raise her game even further by fleshing-out her regular characters more within her excellent settings and narratives.
Read other reviews of this novel at: The Independent, Nordic Bookblog, and It's a Crime!
Interviews with the author about this book at The Scotsman , Scene of the Crime and The Telegraph (whose headline-writer could not resist calling her "Iceland's answer to Stieg Larsson", sigh).
The author blogs at Murder is Everywhere, usually every Wednesday.
My Euro Crime reviews of the two previous books in this series: Last Rituals and My Soul to Take.
Maxine - Thanks so much for this thorough and thoughtful review. I understand exactly what you mean about the length of the book, and I agree: it's best when "regular" characters are rounded out, so to speak. Still, that said, I am definitely going to read this book. I'm a Yrsa fan, and have been eagerly awaiting this one. Not everyone agrees with me, but in my humble opinion, the weaknesses in Yrsa's writing are far outweighed by the strengths, and her weakest is better than plenty of "bests" I've tried...
Posted by: Margot Kinberg | 14 September 2010 at 17:31
Thanks for your thorough review, Maxine. Despite its lenght I'm still tempted to read it, although I may wait for the mass market paperback.
Posted by: Jose Ignacio | 14 September 2010 at 17:49
Thanks, Margot and Jose Ignacio- I hope I was not too down on the book, I really did enjoy it and highly recommend it. I felt that the previous two books were a bit slow in the middle also, so perhaps it is just a personal thing. I will definitely continue to read and enjoy her novels, I'm sure.
Posted by: Maxine | 14 September 2010 at 19:29
You are not the only one who has pointed out weaknesses in her third book, but after her second which I read recently, it is definitely on my list.
How smart of you to borrow library books instead of buying them; perhaps for once my TBR is growing faster than yours. I decided to downsize mine recently, and August was a good month, but somehow it grows quite inexplicably this month ;)
Posted by: Dorte H | 14 September 2010 at 20:44
Hmm, wonder why that is, Dorte ;-). Before Amazon/the internet I did use the library all the time, but have been out of the habit for the past 5 years or so. In my current attempt to downsize/declutter, it has been quite instructive to discover the range of content there, again!
Posted by: Maxine | 14 September 2010 at 21:28
This sounds like a good book, in spite of any weaknesses. I like the character and her life. I'll skip the gruesome parts, which I don't need to read; it does not take away from a book to do that. And, yes, to libraries. Mine is frustrating in that it takes a decade (I swear!) to get some international books in the system, or one is put at the main branch noncirculating--an impossible thing for most people to deal with.
Amazon and the Book Depository are good, but then our budgets go out the window.
Posted by: [email protected] | 14 September 2010 at 21:39
I can already see after two trips to the library, Kathy, that I'll be short of things to read from there soon enough! But ordering titles is a good idea, I used to do that and perhaps I'll start again.
Yes, it is such a problem, acquiring books and then not having time to read them all!
Posted by: Maxine | 15 September 2010 at 09:02
A brief moment of post-good-book slump after finishing Carofiglio's "Involuntary Witness," only to end with another good book. This one did not disappoint all the way to the end, even sending me to the Internet to look up Bari, Italy. The books I have aren't compelling so it's off to the library and my favorite mystery bookstore to buy "Roseanna."
Posted by: [email protected] | 15 September 2010 at 10:11