RLA
The Garden (2008)
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The Garden (2008)

Gerdur Kristny
Winner — The Icelandic Booksellers' Prize 2008
Winner — The West-Nordic Children's Literature Prize 2010
2008
152 pages
Children's Books
9-12 years

The Garden (2008)

Eyja is shocked when she looks through the window in her new flat and sees an enormous cemetery full of gloomy tombs and gravestones just across the street. Talking about neighbours! Still, the situation doesn’t get critical until her father buys a brown leather chair. Her parents think the chair is excellent, but Eyja instantly feels that it has brought something unwelcome into her home – something malignant. In her new school Eyja has great fun with her new mates, but best of all is Solvi – the boy who is perhaps a friend, perhaps a boy-friend, and perhaps in 10th grade.

R E V I E W S

Sample translation in English and French

Reviews

A delicate web is woven here, suspended between the protagonist's present and mysterious events in the distant past, between the boy in the blue anorak and the letters of the unknown girl Halla, between the father's illness and the illness referred to in the mystifying letters, between the living and the dead. ... Almost unnoticeably the author tightens the threads of suspense. Her art consists of not overstretching them. Gerður Kristný performs the fine balancing act of infusing everyday events bit by bit with horror, with admirable mastery.

Deutschland Radio

... Playing with reality ... infused with a dark, Nordic mood, which is reflected in its mysterious plot.

Birgit Müller-Bardorff, Augsburger Allgemeine + BücherJournal, Kinder- und Jugendliteratur

A really frightening book for youths, so engrossing that you can't get enough of it.

SR Kinder- & Jugendbuchliste (Saarländischer Rundfunk)

... an exceptional book. Not only does it, practically in passing, give an insight into Icelandic culture, the plot of this actually fairly short book is gripping. ... Any one whose curiosity is awakened, should simply read it himself.

Ines Christ, Querschläger (LVZ.de)

No one knew what ghosts were about better than the American author Edith Wharton: You only realise that you have encountered a ghost long after it happens, she wrote in her masterful story Afterward – that alone makes it really unsettling. The situation is the same in Gerður Kristný's book for youths, The Garden, except that from the very beginning there is an undertone to the story that points to eerie things in the past.

Tilman Spreckelsen, Frankfurter Allgemeine

In just 173 pages, Icelandic author Gerður Kristný tells a story imbued with its own special magic. She manages to make the eeriness which radiates from this strange armchair so tangible that hardly anyone can drag themselves away from the unsettling discomfort. The pain the girl Eyja experiences when her old friends have forgotten her soon after her departure, and she has to prove herself in a completely new environment, is an additional defining element. The result is a Gothic novel woven from a number of fascinating sequences. The author subtly describes the emotions of the young Eyja, who senses there is something not right with this chair, but whose claims in this regard no one takes seriously. Or almost no one. ... The story she tells has everything a good story needs: It is exciting, driven by conflicting emotions and intangible fears. ... The Garden is exciting and well constructed ... Gerður Kristný knows her trade ...

Rita Dell'Angese, Jugendbuch-Rezension, jugendbuch-couch.de

The Garden is a gripping yet charmingly calm story about 14-year-old Eyja and her family. ... the story focuses on Eyja's emotional life, and the tension and terror that gain the upper hand following mysterious events in the family's life. … In The Garden, art transports Eyja to an imaginary place – in the story it is a healing power, a place to forget oneself, and literally a saviour – as the flute and music play a real role in the solution of the puzzle. And that place also bonds Eyja strongly with Sölvi – but it would spoil the story to say any more about that.

Kristin Vidarsdottir, Bokmenntir.is

Awards

Won

  • The Icelandic Booksellers' Prize 2008
  • The West-Nordic Children's Literature Prize 2010

Rights Sold

Translation rights sold

DenmarkVandkunsten
FinlandEnostone
GermanyBloomsbury
Germany/Austria/SwitzerlandSaga Verlag
NorwayBokvennen
SlovakiaBRAK