Jónas is the kind of man who lives for others. He’s kind. He’s accommodating. But when his wife leaves him and reveals that their daughter is not his biological child, he is plunged into suicidal depression. In fact, when we meet him at the beginning of Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s Hotel Silence (translated by Brian FitzGibbon), he is planning on killing himself. He keeps putting it off because he doesn’t want his daughter to be the one to find his body. Eventually, Jónas plans to travel to a foreign country so that his body will be shipped back without too much fuss. But when he goes abroad to an unnamed country, he finds people who need him and he returns to meaningful life.
The first fifth of Hotel Silence are utterly depressing. Jónas shows us his quiet, lonely life. Without his wife and daughter and with his mother descending into obsessive thoughts about war, Jónas feels like there’s no point going on. He doesn’t have anyone to love or take care of and feels like he never will again. When he goes abroad to a country that was at war until very recently, it’s a relief from the unrelenting Icelandic melancholy of Jónas’ life.
Jónas’ new life starts with little things. He fixes the shower in his room at the Hotel Silence and the sticky door. One of the hotel owners asks him to fix a few other things. So does the owner of the town’s last restaurant. He demurs but caves because he really likes to be helpful. The next thing he knows, Jónas is helping to renovate the hotel and other buildings around town. These repairs and the gratitude of the people in this unnamed town help pull him out of his sorrow.
If you can make it through the first part of Hotel Silence, you’ll be rewarded with a sweet story of people being good to each other (with a few exceptions). This is a rare thing in fiction, since authors almost always torture their protagonists to move the plot forward. Seeing this much altruism left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling when I was done.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. It will be released 22 February 2018.