Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by SjónMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
Month Read In: February 2022
Challenge:
Don't get me wrong, Sjón's way with words, albeit translated by Victoria Cribb was evocative and shocking, outside my comfort zone in reading, but definitely not speaking! The turns of phrase were new and different to me. But wow. The graphicness of Máni Steinn's encounters... whew!
I truly have no idea how I feel about this!
I chose it because I couldn't sit and read my copy of The Blue Fox by the same author, and it was difficult to find an audiobook for it to do an old challenge of "set in Iceland". This is also during 1918, World War I, which was a bit of background noise, as was the eruption of Katla... Because the worst of what Iceland, really Reykjavík, was dealing with (since the capital is nearly the whole entire country), was the Spanish Flu. Kinda apropos for reading at this time in history, don't you think?
16 year old Máni Steinn, meaning moon stone, is gay, orphaned, making money having sexual encounters with men who pay, and some he likes enough he doesn't make them pay, escaping his reality with movies and is constantly rejected by 'polite' society. As the flu rages, does he help them, his fellow man, or retreat further.
I had a lot of trouble keeping up with his fantasy world, his reality, and events. Was this an episode of Howard Stern being poetic?!? W. T. Actual. F. just happened?
Characters: 3. Atmosphere: 4.5. Writing: 4.
Plot: 1. Intrigue: 1. Logic: 1. Enjoyment: 1.
Average: 2.21 equaling 1.5 stars. That's being generous. This technically rounds it up to 2 for Goodreads' purposes... But no way. I rounded down on purpose.
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