by Sjón
I nod to the notion that the interpretation of any art form is left to its viewer. Once the painter, the sculptor, or the writer, releases the work out to the public, the creator no longer possesses its meaning. I don’t understand paintings, let alone sculpture, but I adore the theatre and literature.

Most books are straightforward that they leave little to explore. Some others are capricious yet beautifully written,  that you enjoy the thrill of interpreting on your own terms.

“Moonstone: the Boy Who Never Was” is one of the latter ones.

There are different interpretations. Some readers saw Moonstone “trapped between the reality and cinema”. I saw him gliding in the sky of his own subconscious. He imagines things and sometimes got lost in that spectrum of lights only visible after having a hit of the Girl Scout Cookies: many times confusing, other times shocking, few times despairing. Always intense in graphic.

I listened to an interview with Sjón before reading this book. Through the ears, he sounds like an admirable, down-to-earth, simple man gifted with a magical persona. Through the words, he completed my self-made image of him as a half-extreme realist, half-liberated daydreamer, always gifting his readers with surprises in steady prose and poetic verses.

“Moonstone” is really about surprises to me. It gives a glimpse of Icelandic values in a landscape calmly hovering between fantasy and reality, until it kicks you back well down to the ground at the last second. Iceland seems a dreamlike place really. Fancy a trip?

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