Paperback: It is precisely at that moment that it first dawns on me that I am a woman caught in a finely interwoven pattern of feelings and time, that there are many things going on simultaneously that have a significance to my life, that events don't just simply occur in a linear sequence, but on several plains of thought, dreams and feelings at the same time, that there is a moment at the heart of every moment. It is only much later that a thread through the turmoil that has occurred will emerge.
After a day of being dumped - twice - and accidentally killing a goose, a young woman yearns for a tropical vacation far from the chaos of her life.
Instead, her plans are wrecked by her best friend's four-year-old deaf-mute son, thrust into her reluctant care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two of them set off on a road trip across Iceland with a glove compartment stuffed full of their jackpot earnings.
Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance.
What begins as a spontaneous adventure will unexpectedly and profoundly change the way she views her past and charts her future.
Butterflies in November (2013) is a blackly comic, uniquely moving, charming, extraordinary, uplifting and hilarious tale of friends and lovers, motherhood, self-discovery and the legacy of life's mistakes.
Butterflies in November is translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon.
About the author: Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1958. She studied art history and art theory in Paris and is a lecturer in history of art at the University of Iceland and a director of the University of Iceland Art Collection. The Greenhouse, published in 2007 won the DV Culture Award for literature and a women's literary prize in Iceland, was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Award and received unanimous acclaim. Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir lives and works in Reykjavik.
Rating: 5/5
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