At the end of the 19th century, a daring young woman left Reykjavik for New York. Jubilatory novel emancipation.
by Marie Charrel
If the real heroines are those who ignore each other, Sigurlina brjansdottir, including a whim, novel by Sigrun Palsdottir, tells the course, is certainly one of them. Raised by Brandur Jonsson, an extravagant and widowed archaeologist, she sees her daily life, in Iceland at the end of the 19th e century, crushed by household chores – kitchen, embroidery, detergents. Admittedly, the various translations and contributions that she also brings to her father’s work offers her a window on the world. But the young woman aspires more. Starting to leave the tiny Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, to travel. But how to do it, when everything in his condition – and his father, too happy to count on his help – forbids him to fulfill his dreams?
in the lower districts of Manhattan
Redoubling with intelligence and audacity, of course! Following a succession of more or less painful events – including a rape, which, far from destroying it, breathes the courage to lift anchor – Sigurlina finds herself in possession of a mysterious ancient fibula. This allows her to cross the ocean to New York, where she offers her translation services to a passionate collector. The story could stop there. But bad luck pursues her. It loses all the first time, then a second, until it failed in the lower districts of Manhattan, where an army of small seamstresses in misery for wages of misery. Far from feeling out of her fate, she gradually offers herself a better condition thanks to her embroiderer’s talents. And, above all, thanks to his wheelchair. Even if it means rolling in the flour a skewer of American American society …
Without looking at it, this jubilant story is first of all that of female emancipation. In her own way, the author plays with the traditions of the Picaresque and the melodrama of the XIX e century to better divert them. In fact, while Sigurlina’s misadventures could lend to the tragedy shooting, the singular, biting and hyperbolic pen of Sigrun Palsdottir takes on the reader on the side of comedy, even satire. However, the characters and the abundant details on the time are perfect. Everything sounds true in these funny and accessible pages, even the absurd. And for good reason: Oxford graduate, Sigrun Palsdottir is first of all a recognized historian in her country, author of several biographies. Part of the context of the book comes from research carried out for his doctoral thesis on the fascination of the Anglo-Saxons of the 19th century century for the past of Iceland. And, in particular, on the theory that Icelanders are the first to have discovered America.
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