Your absence is darkness

Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Your absence is darkness

Biblioasis edition

March 11, 2024

By Frank Valish

Your absence is darkness it will be one of the best books you read this year. A thick tome of 430 pages, the book spans generations with a comprehensive plot full of twists and turns and all the mystery one could wish for as its story unfolds.

Translated into absolutely stunning prose from Icelandic, the book opens with a man coming to a church in rural Iceland. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, or how he got there. He has no memory of his past, no idea of ​​the present. Through the help of his sister, the story of his family is told.

Throughout, many stories become intertwined. An educated, married pastor falls in love with a rural woman from afar. A woman makes the heartbreaking decision to give up her child for a better life, hiding her family's secret. An alcoholic stumbles through life, finding solace only in the night sky before his death. The stories seem disparate, until they aren't, and the dots aren't easily connected. Much of the story takes place in a fjord in the middle of nowhere, and the setting lends weight to the proceedings.

Most of Your absence is darkness it's relatively confusing as it unfolds, but confusing in the best possible way. The twists and turns, while the story shifts across families and generations without much of a clear through line, makes it less than a quick read. But the sentences are wonderful, and the wisdom in almost aphorisms, as the reader will find himself highlighting passages that hint at great truths, discovered in the telling of the stories of the present.

And then there's the music. The book comes with a playlist, music that is central to the story, and one will find themselves seeking out the songs as well to dig deeper into the universal meaning. It's not an obvious conceit, but the music bubbles beneath the surface of the narrative, and it's not until you get to the end of the novel that you realize how important it was to the story. Most notably, the playlist is then printed at the end of the text, as if one can relive the novel through its most powerful musical moments.

After all, Your absence is darkness exposes themes of life, death, love, loneliness, mistakes and the search for meaning. The eternal themes. What the great novels carefully but spectacularly elucidate in unparalleled prose. What exactly is the genre of this novel? (www.biblioasis.com)

Author Rating: 9/10