"Children In Reindeer Woods, Kristín Ómarsdóttir's first novel to be translated from Icelandic into English, remains unsettling to the very end. . . . The eventual payoff is profound and rewarding."—World Literature Today
"An assured introduction to her work. . . . Ómarsdóttir's skills as a poet and playwright are particularly evident in the deranged and strangely affecting soap-opera dialogue Billie invents for her dolls, Sara and Ragga."—Helen Oyeyemi, New York Times
"Without a doubt, Children in Reindeer Woods is Kristín Ómarsdóttir's best novel to date, and that's saying a lot. . . . Her gifts come fully into their own in a story, also a polemic against war, handled with mastery."—Hrund Ólafsdóttir
"The novel is often hilarious—but the undercurrent is heavy. . . . A complicated and fragile world where playing with Barbie dolls and guns go side by side."—Erna Erlingsdóttir, TMM
"A literary allegory filled with truths and absurdities about the human condition."—Kirkus Reviews
"Children in Reindeer Woods is a modernist page-turner with a bizarre but compelling plot."—Lisa Sanders, Belletrista
"Children in Reindeer Woods is sharp, spare, and edgy with tension. Ómarsdóttir shows an incredible skill for translating the intentions behind questionable actions; this book will surely pull readers out of their comfort zone into an active quest for what is real."—Rain Taxi
"When we read great, timeless literature (which is what I'm sure this novel will turn out to be), works that disturb as they soothe, offer hope as they crush it—we too, like Billie, are 'getting practice in contradictions.'"—The Rumpus
A literary allegory filled with truths and absurdities about the human condition. An unspecified army invades an unspecified country. Three soldiers arrive at a farm that is also a "temporary home for children" named Children in Reindeer Woods. Without apparent motive, they murder everyone except an 11-year-old girl, Billie. Then the soldier named Rafael murders his comrades. Now he wants to stop killing and become a farmer. Billie is oddly unmoved by the killings and becomes his (platonic) companion as he tries to remake himself into a peaceful human being. Meanwhile, puppet masters on another planet pull strings as they try to manipulate events on Earth. This novel, translated from the Icelandic, takes getting used to. Many phrases are repeated numerous times, giving the story a strange cadence not often seen in Western literature. The characters are not from a particular country or a particular culture; they are from everywhere or anywhere or nowhere. Rafael wants to transform himself from every-soldier to everyman. Can he go from blowing up bombs to helping Billie play with her Barbies? Others pass through Reindeer Woods, such as the wandering nun who stays overnight and either sleeps with Rafael or doesn't. Rafael shoots off one of his toes every time he fails to live up to his own standards, but pain, bleeding and infection seem not to hobble him as he tends his cows and sheep. Despite all the bodies Rafael buries, there is also humor buried in the tale--not hilarity, but perhaps a few wry smiles at mankind's foibles. This is the first of Icelandic author Ómarsdóttir's novels to appear in English, and it shouldn't be the last. Somewhere in the reader's mind, Catch-22 echoes faintly.
Children in Reindeer Woods, the first of the Icelandic writer Kristin Omarsdottir's novels to be translated into English, is an assured introduction to her work. In Lytton Smith's translation, its tone is placid throughout, a smooth skin that stirs only slightly, for laughter's sake or to tremble in anticipation of violence…Omarsdottir's skills as a poet and playwright are particularly evident in the deranged and strangely affecting soap-opera dialogue Billie invents for her dolls…[in] this daringly droll, wholly perturbing book…
—The New York Times Book Review
