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Culture Watch

In this issue:

AND CONSIDER THIS:

The Journey Home

by Olaf Olafsson

(Pantheon; 296 pages; $24)

The doctor has told her that she cannot expect to live many more months, and now Desa has two final trips to make. She is leaving Britain and the country-house hotel she helps to manage and returning for a last time to Iceland, her birthplace, and on the way north, travels again into her past. This subtle and gracefully nuanced novel is her diary of those memories, some of them appearing like long ago dreams. As she nears Iceland, each mile brings back scenes of pain or happiness: her mother's anger, the pleasures of food and of learning to become a fine professional cook, the brief and tragic love for her fiancé Jakob, and finally the job in the home of a wealthy Icelandic family and the savage attack one dark night.

She speculates on the existence of the devil ("Whatever you can say about him, you can't deny that he's enterprising'') and the presence of God ("Where are you when you're needed? Why do you hide in the mists then?''). There's a purpose to Disa's desire to go home, one last thing that she must do, one last person she must see, and the author wisely keeps this secret until almost the book's end. Her purpose accomplished, Disa returns to Britain, to wait with a tranquil heart and a renewed spirit for the coming winter--and her death. The reader who accompanies Desa on the journey will be moved by her courageous search for acceptance and resolution.

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