Vintage International's "The Fish Can Sing": A Classic Tale of Music and Adventure

Amazon Customer: my favorite writer

Germany on Mar 18, 2019

terence dooley: Iceland and Ireland only differ by one letter, and it's Flann O'Brtien that I'm first of all reminded by in the hilarious and merciless humour of Halldor Laxness when he writes of his ain folk, the plain people of Iceland. But here is a kinder, more universal writer, and this story of an idyllic childhood lived in poverty and extreme eccentricity and hospitality, and of a vocation for song is an absolute delight.

United Kingdom on Jan 13, 2018

Monica Frassoni: Prende un po' di tempo entrare nella
Storia. Ma poi e veramente affascinante... Personaggi molto forti e sempre
Positivi. La musica onnipresente ma estranea

France on Aug 15, 2014

wyver: I had just read Independent People by the same author and turned to this novel not wanting to leave Iceland just yet. Where Independent People is dark and brooding in The Fish Can Sing the story is warm and humorous. The former's characters have impoverished lives yet we can identify with their universal feelings and emotions. The main characters in "Fish" are no less poor but seen through the eyes of the main character this financial poverty is almost a virtue, counteracted by the emotional wealth.

United Kingdom on Sep 08, 2013

veronica saunders: I chose this book following a recent visit to Iceland which I enjoyed very much and wanted to learn more about the culture and the people , I find novels are a good way of doing this , our guide and some other travellers recommended this . A simple unsophistcated start thet set the local scene, as the book went on the humour became apparent and a greater depth of understanding the local philosophy ... rather like Charles Dickens in the details of the characters . It is the charming story of a boy who has been brought up by an old couple living in Rekyjavik, his reactions to the people he meets as he grows up and their part in his journey towards adulthood
I am now going to read Independent People by the same author

United Kingdom on Sep 01, 2013

Sylvia: I loved this book. The unusual characters are well drawn with a sympathetic humor not often found . I assume that a great deal of the book is autobiographical. It reminded me of my youth when all I wanted to do while growing up was work in a dress shop. The main protagonist in this book always says he just wants to be a fisherman like his guardian but he is much too talented and is gently guided by the whole community into a more challenging career. The only thing I regret is that we see so little of Iceland; but then I suppose in midwinter it is always in darkness and maybe scenery is not something of importance in Iceland. We do get a feeling of freshness but the characters are the main event here. I recommend this book without any reservations.

United States on Jul 16, 2012

Friederike Knabe: Halldór Laxness is undoubtedly Iceland's most famous writer. The story goes that he was in the middle of writing "Brekkukotsannall" - translated (surprisingly) as The Fish Can Sing - when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (in 1955). Did this recognition change the way he completed the novel? May be, maybe not. Still, reading it with that knowledge in the back of my mind, the novel turns for me into much more that the intimate portrait of a "family", a small village community at the turn of the last century and a coming-of-age story of a young orphan boy, Alfgrimur. Couched in the narrator's stream of consciousness, gracefully integrating the child's view of his world with that of his older, reflective self, we discover the narrator/author's insightful musings on tradition and modernity, loyalty and betrayal, poverty and wealth, obscurity and celebrity. In his descriptions of people and place, Laxness's affecting sense of irony often makes light of the precarious situation in which most of the traditionally-minded locals in the "village" find themselves. The closely-knit community - fishermen, former navy men, the local priest, and the "old women" who look after them...

United States on Mar 03, 2012

scott89119: The Fish Can Sing is an odd little novel about a talented yet humble young man in Iceland. Laxness paints a broad canvas here before settling into the novel's plot; we learn countless small details of everyday life in a small Icelandic village, nearby the capital that is itself a tiny blip on the world map. Everything is warm and inviting, albeit slightly peculiar, and as it continues we become more familiar with the narrator, Alfgrimur. As a protagonist he is nothing special, but the book's strength lies more in its themes and patterns than in characterization. As he matures he forms a surprising bond with his country's biggest star, the famous singer Gathar Holm. Holm travels the world and lives a life of ostensible luxury, yet the closer Alfgrimur grows to him the more he sees fame as fleeting and inauthentic.

This is the book that Laxness was working on when he won the Nobel Prize, to date the only person from his country to have done so, and has a strange beauty to it that is borne from his obvious love for Iceland. Every character here is good-hearted; gone is the brooding protagonist of Independent People, or the Dickensian, conspiratorial villains in World Light....

United States on Dec 20, 2009

Sarang Gopalakrishnan: The charm of this book is in its atmosphere. You get a wonderful feel of early C20 Iceland and the characters that inhabit it, from the old-fashioned fisherman who ignores market economics to the admirer of modern cesspits. The age of the novel, like its hero, progresses from child to early-adolescent. A particularly charming thing about this novel is the way rather grimy adult features of adulthood are transformed by the place and its people. The cesspit-admirer, for instance, sees modern cesspits solely as an exciting new invention; and the farmers, when they discover barbed wire, just string it up in purposeless and harmless lines across the country.
The plot involves an orphan boy (Alfgrimur) who might be a gifted singer, his experiences while growing up, and his relationship with the elusive "famous Icelandic singer" Gardar Holm. But "fame" appears to be something petty, the god of Danish shopkeepers (Danes, of course, are grown-up) -- and the "one true note" which Alfgrimur seeks can be attained just as well while singing at funerals in the local churchyard.

United States on Dec 31, 2003