Quake, by Icelandic Literary Prize-winning author Auður Jónsdóttir (The People in the Basement), is an engrossing, multilayered mystery in which memories--imagined, erased and recovered--determine the future of a fractured family. Jónsdóttir introduces the protagonist in various scenarios in the novel's opening--anonymous in the brief first chapter, waking from an accident in the second and hospitalized in chapter three--as if immediately signaling the unreliability of knowing and remembering.
Saga is the mother of three-and-a-half-year-old Ívar. He goes missing when Saga, as later revealed, has three sequential epileptic seizures. Ívar is quickly retrieved and placed safely with his father, but when Saga returns to her apartment, she can't understand why her husband lives somewhere else. She can "conjure the good" when trying to recall their past, but attempts to access anything difficult result in "stabbing pain." Betrayed by her mind and body, she can't be left alone--and she can't be trusted with Ívar. Understanding and recovery require the untangling of decades of labyrinthine secrets, hidden especially between parents and children.
Originally published in Iceland in 2015 and adapted into a lauded film, Quake is Jónsdóttir's first novel to be translated into English. It is an intimate collaboration with translator and poet Meg Matich. Matich notes that "Icelandic is a precious language," spoken by 350,000 people. With empathic insight and precision, Matich enables readers access to what she calls "Auður's floating, feral Icelandic." --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon