How Fish Love (1993)
1993
107 pages
Fiction
They met by chance while abroad and there the story began: Once there was a raindrop that quietly crept under the neckline of a sky-blue shirt.
Samanta Einarsdóttir tells us the story of her love affair with Hans Örlygsson, which has been on-again-off-again for three years and will now come to its end. They met by chance in a foreign city, toured a castle together, had drinks at a bar and then dinner at a restaurant. They shared one extraordinary morning, noon and night, but their relationship remains unchanged.
How Fish Love by Steinunn Sigurdardóttir is a razor-sharp, bittersweet and heartbreaking story of an ill-fated affair, a love story in which nothing happens as it happens; a story of lovers destined only to be apart, a story of a person letting life slip through her fingers.
Reviews
“Unusually powerful and poignant work.”
GISLI SIGURDSSON, DV NEWSPAPER
“...a lovely story and quite romantic, telling us that we may meet the one person who can affect us in such a way that no one else can ever touch us in the same way or replace them. This book also claims that “nothing ever happens while it happens. It all happens afterwards.” Meaning that the experience of an event lives not in its present moment, but rather after it has occurred. It is later that people revisit an event through memory and discover the underlying emotion, but because of an unforeseen series of events, despite the fact that these two people want nothing more than to be together, it is not a possibility. How Fish Love is a slender volume of tremendous beauty and a memorable read. It is remarkably well written as Steinunn is [Iceland’s] singlemost stylistically gifted writer.”
KOLBRUN BERGTHORSDOTTIR, PRESSAN
“Sigurdardottir’s way of describing her protagonist is credible, loyal and present. As a reader, I feel the experience of being made alive through love and the pain it can bring. In addition, there are expressions and images between the lines of the volatility and avenue of life; intense love comes and disappears, nothing lasts forever and still everything does in terms of our dedication to things. Fish are slippery and sluggish against each other and apart. Perhaps, therefore, the title How Fish Love; it is also with us people, which is why this book may be relevant at any time. It is based on existential and philosophical issues, but also psychological, including In terms of how we meet people, go apart and communicate as well as we can with the tools we have.”
BOGRUMMET, DENMARK
“Light as a feather and yet meaningful. This is the short and also cheerful love story of the Icelander, a reading suitable for men and women alike. It is about the “passion against all reason”, which happens to the independent editor Samanta when meeting the married manager Hans. The impossibility of the relationship turns around and becomes a stimulating and intensifying moment. Since the first-person narrator reports from memory, her grief still seems to be locationless, the event remains unresolved until a new love finds itself and the pain flows into the elemental Icelandic soul landscape. Steinunn Sigurdardottir, also in her other novels, added to the insular writing a self-assured note that, away from the purely epic, combines irony with melancholy, the unfathomable with the neurotic, and yet does not lose sight of the Icelandic forces of nature, and leaves me such a happy reviewer!”
NEUE ZÜRICHER ZEITUNG, GERMANY
“Fish lives without touching each other, and this is a beautiful picture for the story of two lovers who do not find each other. Instead of Hans, who does not want to go out of her mind for a long time, Samanta marries the divorced Erlingur and begins to wonder, “is it one and the same to stage an amusing life or have one?” Steinunn Sigurdardottir brings gentleness and empathy to the souls of her characters, and with the background of the captivating and permanently beautiful Icelandic landscape she leaves the question open as to whether Samantas fate is tragic or not.”
WOLFGANG MÜLLER, DIE TAGESZEITUNG, GERMANY
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