Simply delightful

The Blue Fox
Sjón

This book delighted me. Because much of the delight came from the various ways in which it surprised me, I feel that it’s a book about which I don’t want to say too much – for fear of ruining the surprise for others. This isn’t therefore a particularly easy account to write!

In terms of length, The Blue Fox is a short book; yet it feels expansive. This is no doubt due to some meticulous crafting. Not a single word feels wasted; every sentence is freighted with significance. Details that seem unremarkable in fact turn out to be fundamental. The first section of the book feels like a prose poem and could easily stand alone as a work of art in its own right. At the end of it, the novel shifted perspective and I wondered if this opening was, in fact, a decorative one with no bearing on the novel’s main plot. It turned out the opposite was true; in this novel, seemingly unrelated events are revealed to be deeply connected. More than anything, Sjon’s writing is beautiful. Take, for example: ‘his ill-made body shook in the chair like a leaf quivering before an autumn gale, not knowing whether it will be torn from the bush that has fostered it all summer long or linger there – and wither; but neither fate is good’. There is, in this one image, complexity, precision, whimsy, profundity. Reading the novel, I found those qualities again and again. This is definitely a book I hope you love as much as I do.