If recently I was talking about the book Nordic myths, by Neil Gaiman, with its intertwined point of mythology and literature, this time it is the turn of the book The Wolf's Smile, a work entirely of fiction about one of the most unique historical periods in extreme northern Europe.
It is the XNUMXth century in an Iceland delivered to the most basic rules of coexistence and subjected to biological rhythms very different from the rest of Europe, with its sunsets that last for months and its endless seasons of natural light.
What is presented to us in this book sounds in principle similar to the last read by Cecilia Ekbäck, The dark light of the midnight sun. The prevailing cold blue as the ideal setting for a plot of black genre, only that several centuries later in the aforementioned case.
The point is that in that XNUMXth century, after days and days of darkness, Kirián and Gunnar succumb to suggestion and go out to kill the ghost that haunted the village. Confident in the truth of that story about evil walking among the farms, the boys do not hesitate for a moment to annihilate that strange presence.
The dead man was finally flesh and blood. Kirián and Gunnar had been the victims of a conspiracy to turn them into ruthless assassins. Hoping to be lucky enough to one day use their revenge, the two friends face the punishment of a law of reduced articles and minimal guarantees. His life can be part of the reparation for the evil caused, in a violent blood dispute with which to compensate the other blood.
From the first perspective of a historical novel, we discover this undeniable point of a crime novel that engages in a masterful combination. Knowing how they could live in those years in such inhospitable lands and discovering what will happen to Kirián and Gunnar make up a dynamic and balanced narrative, with some natural customs brushstrokes of the historical moment but always leading the narrated events in a fast-paced way.
You can buy the book The wolf's smile, Tim Leach's new novel, here: