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Angels of the Universe Einar Mar Gudmundsson Bernard Scudder Books

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Angels of the Universe Einar Mar Gudmundsson Bernard Scudder Books

Excellent book. I had read the reviews and decided that it was a book I would like to read. It is exactly what reviewers had written. This is a story of a man's descent into madness. All emotions will be touched while reading this story.... humor, sadness.


Tags : Amazon.com: Angels of the Universe (9780312150532): Einar Mar Gudmundsson, Bernard Scudder: Books,Einar Mar Gudmundsson, Bernard Scudder,Angels of the Universe,St Martins Pr,0312150539,Literary,Mentally ill;Fiction.,Reykjavƒik (Iceland);Fiction.,Schizophrenics;Fiction.,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Fiction - Coming of Age,GENERAL,General Adult,Great BritainBritish Isles,ICELANDIC (LANGUAGE) CONTEMPORARY FICTION,Mentally ill,Reykjavƒik (Iceland),Schizophrenics

Angels of the Universe Einar Mar Gudmundsson Bernard Scudder Books Reviews

I won't go into the basics of this book since most of the other reviews have done that. What I'd like to add is how well the author balances and tangles the tragic and the humor together, which is rare to see done so well in modern literature. Also how the writing style seems minimalistic in many ways but then there come highly poetic parts out of nowhere, which makes the poetic parts so much better than when authors are trying to make every sentence into something poetical and it just gets boring. I also would like to add, for those of you who are interested, that you can (or atleast could) get a copy of the film from [...] it's an Icelandic store. The film is great and Paul is portrayed brilliantly by the main actor. I just have a hard time wondering why the book/film didn't get more attention.
Iceland has one of the highest rates of literacy in the world and it shows. This book is one of the great results of that... it's one of the best books I've read on psychological breakdown and manages to avoid many of the cliches in that field. While it does sail close to the pretentious at points, it avoids going over that edge, and raises some serious social points.
There's some great social commentary in this book... about Dagny the rebellious bourgeois girlfriend of the "hero", NATO, the way we can treat the mentally ill much like criminals, society-as-a-whole's own insanity... and as one reviewer has already quoted that key line "The madhouse is in a lot of places"*. Our society is completely hypocritical about madness.
This book doesn't feel like a translation to read.
The film is excellent too, but since it isn't in English, will be overlooked sadly. (
* I wonder in fact if Arthur Koestler's (non-fiction) "The Ghost in the Machine" has influenced this book. Certainly some key ideas seem to be common to both of them.
Einar Mar Gudmundsson's short but rich novel is dark, but it is not without humor -- and that's a good thing, since it's an 'inside' look at a young man slowly losing his grip on reality. He experiences paranoia and hallucinations, experiments with drugs, and is suffering from severe depression. He has his lighter moments -- in fact, he's an intelligent and lucid person much of the time -- but the weight of his madness slowly drags him further and further down.
The humor in the book comes in the form of some of his friends -- fellow-inmates at the Klepp Psychiatric Institute in Rekjavik. His portraits of some of the doctors, orderlies -- and police -- that he encounters will bring a smile to the reader as well.
The author is obviously pretty sensitive to the plight and conditions in which people suffering from mental illness live -- his characters, while embodying much humor, never come across as charicatures, but as real human beings. I've read that this novel has been (or is being) made into a film in Iceland -- like another reviewer below, I strongly hope that it makes it to the States. I'd love to see a well-made screen version -- I hope that the author has a great deal of control over it, to keep it true to the spirit of this enlightening and compelling novel.
In its own surreal, non-linear way this book tackles larger questions than cannot be answered what is reality? Who determines what it is? More telling, who determines when you have stumbled outside the boundaries of reality and accepted norms?
Angels of the Universe tells a heartbreaking (to echo another reviewer's sentiments) story of Paul, an Icelandic man who slowly loses his footing in reality while giving the reader a glimpse into Icelandic life.
The tale is tragic, following Paul's slow descent further and further into himself. Nevertheless the book also illustrates the fact that madness, or perceived madness, or depression, or any kind of emotional or mental illness can befall anyone. Paul's friend Rognvald, who appears to be content, living a "normal" life, kills himself. Rognvald always visits Paul in Klepp Psychiatric Hospital and when Paul tells Rognvald that he wishes Rognvald had become a psychiatrist instead of the dentist he was, Rognvald replies, "Don't you reckon it's not enough trouble keeping yourself on the right side of the line?" Paul says that he cannot imagine anything more normal than being a wealthy dentist, adding that there isn't room for healthy sorts of folks like dentists at the madhouse. Rognvald replies, "But just bear in mind that the madhouse is in a lot of places."
What point could be made that is more true? Many places and stations in life are places that might just as well be asylums, and the book points out that there is illness and pain everywhere which is ultimately what made the book realistic and painful to read.
Although the book is out of print, it is available in Iceland in Icelandic and English. A film has also been made.
Great introduction to Icelandic fiction. A good read either before or after a visti to Iceland
I had to read this as a library book in Kansas because I have not been able to find it in English anywhere--not even an Icelandic version when I visited Iceland.
The story is schizophrenic in itself yet gives you a wonderful (i.e., thorough, emotional) impression of life in Iceland. The main character struggles through his increasing madness, as the other reviews explain in detail. It's just a great read.
I understand the Iceland film commission is making it into a movie, but I wonder if it will make it to Kansas. It should be in paperback and on bookshelves in all Barnes & Nobles, Borders, etc. and at !
Excellent book. I had read the reviews and decided that it was a book I would like to read. It is exactly what reviewers had written. This is a story of a man's descent into madness. All emotions will be touched while reading this story.... humor, sadness.