A Book of Adolescence (2014)
2014
288 pages
Fiction
The confirmation candidate pedals furiously around Axarfjordur and into his teenage years.
The future is a blank page, the past more or less the same. He is leaving home for the first time, ahead of him five years in Reykjavik: Pop music, wearing winkle-pickers and doing the Twist, the apostles John, George, Paul, and Ringo, cubism, poetry and the iceberg principle, literature, jazz, freedom, and creativity. Transformed into an incorrigeble poet in a beret and a long scarf, he’s engulfed by the world of art and he’s never coming back.
Reviews
“Is it possible to describe how stupid it is to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old? I hardly think so. Still, I’ll try.”
“A beautiful and enchanting work that will without doubt take its place in Icelandic literature as an important document of its times, then and now.”
FRETTATIMINN WEEKLY
“Palsson writes with a stylistic lightness of touch that makes him a pleasure to read. By endowing everyday events and situations with an engaging romantic air he brings his childhood years to life without ever stumbling into sentimentalism or affectation.”
VIDSJA, ICELANDIC NATIONAL RADIO