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

“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

“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

Sample translation in English and French