The Blue Fox: A Novel

A quick, enjoyable read with a compelling story.Twelve more words required, as this forum resists brevity by a reviewer.

Given that this novel is practically poetry in translation I would be interested to hear how it is in Icelandic.Highly recommended. An evocation of place, the treeless landscape emerges, as well as the stark emotional landscape of the people.

"The Blue Fox," by Sjon, is a dark, yet playful and humorous fable about a kind man, an evil man, a simpleton, and a blue fox. It is about fate, life, and human nature. The novella deals with evil cloaked in religion and justice being delivered in mysterious ways. It is full of hidden meaning, subtlety, and delightful intellectually amusing diversions.This small book can be read easily in a single sitting...yet it is also the type of literature that benefits from a second reading. Personally, I enjoyed it far more when rereading it than I did the first time around. I had to use the dictionary frequently and had to pay special attention to Icelandic names and nicknames.In my opinion, there  is no single right way to interpret this parable. Readers will uncover various personal messages that bear significance to their individual lives. But I feel strongly that the emphasis of this novel is not on the meaning behind the parable, rather it is on the joy, magic, and humor of the telling. Sjon is an imp of a storyteller; his stories can move off suddenly in any direction: dark, bizarre, touching, dazzling, brilliant, wise. He frequently uses contrasting literary styles--especially stark realism versus magical realism--to evoke synergy and literary counterpoint. Reading  Sjon is, above all, an experience. Allow yourself to feel his words. If you've read one book and liked it, then I suspect you'll eagerly want to come back for more. "The Blue Fox" is one of a trilogy of Sjon's prize-winning novellas that are currently being published (by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) for the first time in the U.S. in outstanding translations by Victoria Cribb. The other two books in this series are "The Mouth of the Whale" and "The Whispering Muse."  All three books are a steal at the current Kindle price if you consider that you are not only paying for the author's work, but also for the work of the translator...and a very fine translation it is!

I really enjoyed reading this. A beautifully woven tale.

This book was a subtle fable. It was well written, a simple yet deeply thoughtful examination of human nature. It is reminscent of Haldor Laxness. I bought it as a book assignment for a home schooled junior high school student. It delivered, challenging both reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

Excellent story! Excellent writer! The novel may be short but is very, very good. Some comments mention that the translation is not fantastic. As a linguist myself, all I can say is that it is true that one feels the original Icelandic trying to break through, but then again, translating a literary phenomenon like Sjon who writes in a language which manages to be down to earth and poetic at the same time, is very difficult. Anyway, I prefer a translation where one feels a trace of the original, especially in the case of languages which share certain common traits, to a translation where the author is transposed more or less correctly, but where grammar and style are blandly perfect. Here, the translator has done a very good job as I felt deeply immersed in the story and could sense its natural environment, actually the third person in the book.

The Blue Fox is a difficult book to judge. On the one hand it is beautifully, even poetically, written. One the other it is a bare bones story, one which takes only about two hours to read. Sjon focuses less on story here, and more on creating an atmosphere; a stark, brutal, and terribly beautiful atmosphere. And he does so wonderfully, managing to powerfully evoke a sense of time and place in a relatively few amount of words. The sparse nature of the book probably works in its favor here, giving little opportunity for the spell to be broken, but I can't help but feel that if this were a longer, more fleshed out novel it could have been truly great. Still, The Blue Fox is a very good little book, well worth the read.

A saga, a parable, a magical journey, a story of life, a poem of a human and a vixen. So much in a compact narrative.

I bought this book on impulse after receiving it in a recommendation from Amazon. I had never heard of Sjon, but I have a theory that books which are good enough to be translated are worth looking at.I loved this book. It is beautifully written and equally beautifully translated: "Blue foxes are so curiously like stones that it is a matter for wonder. When they lie beside them in winter there is no hope of telling them apart from the rocks themselves."It starts as a simple story of a man hunting a blue fox and then expands to the story of a herbalist and a Down's Syndrome girl he adopts.The descriptions capture the landscape and the tension of the hunt for the blue fox beautifully. The story is as beautiful and brutal as a northern winter. Despite or perhaps because of that brutality I loved the humanity of the book: the portrayal of the herbalist and the girl’s relationship. I recommend this book to you.

Good and interesting, especially in how ties its multiple seemingly unrelated plot arcs together. Still quite jarring and peculiar at times, and making it difficult for the reader to differentiate between past and present, dream space and the real world.

What a great story and presumably a great translation this is. It is a short story that does not waste any of the prose in unnecessary waffle.Well worth a read if you like something a bit different.

...as is very considered. Lovely use of language with the story coming second. Highly original. On the hunt for more Icelandic treats.

A masterpiece of wondrous magic and lyrical verse. It is hard not to get swept up in the majesty of this book. A perfect winter read for anyone who loved The Snow Child.