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Names For The Sea: Strangers In Iceland (2012)

by Sarah Moss(Favorite Author)

3.73 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

184708415X (ISBN13: 9781847084156)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Granta

review 1: I picked this up at the library when searching for travel guides on Iceland, as I hope to travel there next spring. The author, Sarah Moss, relays a lot of interesting details about Iceland that she picks up during her one-year stay there, and in some ways reading this felt more useful than a travel guide. Initially I was a little let down because I expected her to travel all over Iceland right off the bat. Instead she and her family are limited to Reykjavik because of financial and job responsibilities. However, this gives her the opportunity to speak with locals and other foreigners like herself who have relocated. You end up having a nice little window into Icelandic culture, covering things like the "kreppa" or economic crash, the recent "pots and pans" political revol... moreution, volcanic eruptions, food, children and family, driving, and even their knitting traditions and belief in elves. Her writing is strong as one would expect of an English Lit professor and the descriptions were at times quite poetic and lovely. I really enjoyed this, especially as an American looking for some cultural background before traveling.
review 2: If you’ve ever watched “House Hunters International” and wondered what happens to the smiling couples after they’ve spent a year in far from home, then “Names for the Sea” is for you. It’s especially for you if you’ve visited Iceland and fallen for that amazingly beautiful and somewhat treacherous island. Sarah Moss, a British novelist and married mother of two small children, moved to Iceland with her husband to take a university teaching position during an eventful year; Iceland’s economy had tanked, and the volcano Eyjafjallajökull decided to blow. “Names” is her memoir of that year, a year spent scraping by in a country with a high cost of living. This isn’t a tourist’s guide to Iceland, but it is a thoughtful introduction to a proud and somewhat insular people. Moss both celebrates and ponders their differences from other Europeans: “I wonder if I’m beginning to understand why Icelanders seem unperturbed by economic collapse, the swine flu epidemic …and the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull….Fishing means that all plans and livelihoods are always dependent of the whims of the North Atlantic wind and weather, and the alternative is farming on land that explodes from time to time. A limited sense of responsibility and agency could be the only way of remaining sane in such a place; you can’t live in Iceland without discovering the limits of human power, and it’s not intelligent to try to take responsibility for what you can’t control.” Recommended. less

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