Tag: Reviews

#BlogTour #BookReview Storytellers by Bjørn Larssen

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StorytellersWelcome to the opening day of the blog tour for Storytellers by Bjørn Larssen. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy.

StorytellersAbout the Book

Would you murder your brothers to keep them from telling the truth about themselves?

On a long, cold Icelandic night in March 1920, Gunnar, a hermit blacksmith, finds himself with an unwanted lodger – Sigurd, an injured stranger who offers a story from the past. But some stories, even those of an old man who can barely walk, are too dangerous to hear. They alter the listeners’ lives forever… by ending them.

Others are keen on changing Gunnar’s life as well. Depending on who gets to tell his story, it might lead towards an unwanted marriage, an intervention, rejoining the Church, letting the elf drive him insane, or succumbing to the demons in his mind. Will he manage to write his own last chapter?

Bjørn Larssen’s award-winning, Amazon #1 best selling novel is an otherworldly, emotive Icelandic saga – a story of love and loneliness, relief and suffering, hatred… and hope.

Format: Paperback (292 pages)       Publisher: josephtailor
Publication date: 28th March 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery

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My Review

There are shades of One Thousand and One Nights with Sigurd as a latter day Scheherazade trying to eke out his story in order to give him time to execute a plan, hints of which very gradually emerge. Sigurd’s story is in the tradition of Icelandic sagas told around the fireside. I liked the way the book explored the concept of storytelling, whether as a creative act, for entertainment, to impart a moral message, as a form of self-deception (the stories we tell ourselves) or a means to spread rumour, gossip or disinformation. The inhabitants of Gunnar’s village particularly enjoy the last three.

Throughout the book Gunnar remains an eccentric, solitary and troubled character who experiences moments of extreme mental distress and struggles with addiction.  However, his generous nature means he never loses our sympathy and I’m sure I’m not the only reader willing him to resist the lure of those bottles or to share his pleasure in his nice new coat.

There are some nice touches of humour such as Gunnar’s christening of a group of well-meaning ladies whose visits he comes to dread as ‘The Constipated Hags of Iceland’ or Sigurd’s wish that Gunnar leave him alone so he can finish the ‘What Season Actually Suits Your Personality’ quiz in The Women’s Paper. Reading material is in short supply in Gunnar’s village and I think we all suspect Sigurd is definitely a (dead of) winter person. And Gunnar’s initial suggestion for a suitable name for an elf made me laugh out loud.

The author created a good sense of what daily life must have been like in a small village in Iceland in earlier times. Gunnar’s story is set in 1920 although I must say there was very little, apart from the doctor possessing a telephone and Sigurd’s reading matter, to obviously position it in that period. I found some concentration was required so as not to get confused between the characters in Sigurd’s story and Gunnar’s life. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.

I confess it was curiosity rather than a feeling of suspense that propelled me through the book. It starts quite slowly – indeed I had some sympathy with Gunnar’s frustration at the speed of Sigurd’s storytelling. At one point, Gunnar complains to Sigurd about a lack of action scenes in the story and Sigurd replies, ‘It’s called a build-up… It’s for dramatic effect’. Storytellers would not meet my definition of a page-turner; for me it’s more a character study but no less entertaining for that. And it’s fair to say the book picks up pace in the final chapters with some last minute surprises and reveals.

In three words: Quirky, detailed, tender

Try something similar: A Stranger from the Storm by William Burton McCormick

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Storytellers bjorn-promo-photo-2020aAbout the Author

Bjørn Larssen is a Norse heathen made in Poland, but mostly located in a Dutch suburb, except for his heart which he lost in Iceland. Born in 1977, he self-published his first graphic novel at the age of seven in a limited edition of one, following this achievement several decades later with his first book containing multiple sentences and winning awards he didn’t design himself. His writing is described as ‘dark’ and ‘literary’, but he remains incapable of taking anything seriously for more than 60 seconds.

Bjørn has a degree in mathematics and has worked as a graphic designer, a model, a bartender, and a blacksmith (not all at the same time). His hobbies include sitting by open fires, dressing like an extra from Vikings, installing operating systems, and dreaming about living in a log cabin in the north of Iceland. He owns one (1) husband and is owned by one (1) neighbourhood cat.

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#WWWWednesday – 26th January 2022

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

Late CityLate City by Robert Olen Butler (eARC, No Exit Press)

A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam’s life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus.

Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the US, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the
twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam’s at almost every turn.

As he contemplates his relationships – with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son – Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

The Silver WolfThe Silver Wolf by J. C. Harvey (ARC, Allen & Unwin via Readers First)

Amidst the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, Jack Fiskardo embarks upon a quest that will carry him inexorably from France to Amsterdam and then onto the battlefields of Germany. As he grows to manhood will he be able to unravel the mystery of his father’s death? Or will his father’s killers find him first?

The Silver Wolf is a tale of secrets and treachery and the relentlessness of fate – but it is also a story of courage and compassion, of love and loyalty and ultimately of salvation too.

Recently finished

The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. (Quercus)

The Man in the Bunker (Tom Wilde #6) by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

Storytellers by Bjørn Larssen (josephtailor)

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore (Granta)

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow.

In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes.

But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins, a mysterious, pious figure dressed from head to toe in black, takes over The Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge. (Review to follow)

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (Simon & Schuster)

On September 5th, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: they’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but for different reasosn, they’re both looking for a new friend on their End Day. The good news: there’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure – to live a lifetime in a single day. (Review to follow)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Language of Food CoverThe Language of Food by Annabel Abbs (ARC, Simon & Schuster) 

Eliza Acton, despite having never before boiled an egg, became one of the world’s most successful cookery writers, revolutionizing cooking and cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, uplifting and truly inspiring.

England 1837. Eliza Acton is a poet who dreams of seeing her words in print. But when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’. Instead, they want her to write a cookery book. England is awash with exciting new ingredients, from spices to exotic fruits. That’s what readers really want from women.

Eliza leaves the offices appalled. But when her father is forced to flee the country for bankruptcy, she has no choice but to consider the proposal. Never having cooked before in her life, she is determined to learn and to discover, if she can, the poetry in recipe writing. To assist her, she hires seventeen-year-old Ann Kirby, the impoverished daughter of a war-crippled father and a mother with dementia.

Over the course of ten years, Eliza and Ann developed an unusual friendship – one that crossed social classes and divides – and, together, they broke the mould of traditional cookbooks and changed the course of cookery writing forever.