A relatively short but interesting look into an aspect of history I had no real insight into. The novel follows the life of a young Icelandic man growing up in the post-WW2 era and yet being lured into Neo-Nazism. It takes an interesting approach of showing his early life in a standard narrative structure (giving a relatively objective view of his early life) before switching to letters as he becomes an adult (thereby switching to his own mindset, albeit in smaller windows). I mainly ranked it "I liked it" because while it was interesting it was also a bit too brief to really dig into the subject matter. ( )

This short novel by the Icelandic author Sjon tells the story of a young Icelander who, despite being raised in a liberal family, becomes a leader in the Icelandic neo-Nazi movement of the late 1950s. The book is made up of numerous very short chapters, each of which shed a light on the young man. Sjon's style makes it seem that the reader is looking at the figures in the book through a smoky glass leaving the reader unsure of what is real. ( )

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A timely and provocative novel about a mysterious Icelandic neo-Nazi and the enduring global allure of fascism.

In England in 1962, an Icelandic man is found dead on a train bound for Cheltenham Spa. In his possession, policemen find a map on which a swastika has been drawn with a red pen. Who was he, and where was he going?

In a novel that reads as both biography and mystery, the internationally celebrated novelist Sjón tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, the founder of Iceland's anti-Semitic nationalist party, with ties to a burgeoning network of neo-Nazi groups across the globe. Told in a series of scenes and letters spanning Kampen's lifetime—from his childhood in Reyjavík during the Second World War, in a household strongly opposed to Hitler and his views, through his education, political radicalization, and his final clandestine mission to England—Red Milk urges readers to confront the international legacy of twentieth-century fascism and the often unknowable forces that drive some people to extremism.

Based on one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that operated in Reykjavík in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this taut and potent novel explores what shapes a young man and the enduring, disturbing allure of Nazi ideology.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There is so much that goes into making a person's life. So many moments of seeming ordinariness, so many times unremembered but never forgotten.

Author Sjón absolutely understands this, relies on it, makes me aware of how unaware I am in my life. Living it day-to-day it's unremarkable. After it's over, as it's ending...those are the times reflection becomes available to the average person. Author Sjón takes that truth and makes it the structure of the novel.

We're reading the life of Gunnar after it's over, after it's been picked apart and examined...this book reads like an evidence box would, pick up this letter, what did this key open...and that lets us contextualize the story as the tragedy it really is.

I was gobsmacked to learn this is a based-in-fact story, this was a real person, the ending is factual. How Gunnar came to hold beliefs so horrible to me was all in the oblique and the sidewise and the interstitial parts of the text. Lest that sound Arty and pretentious, I hasten to say that there is no better way I evoke an honest emotional response than this. Author Sjón trusts you to Get It. He allows you not to know.

I'll take that sense of being allowed to find the truth in the fiction over being spoonfed any day.

What I hope you'll enjoy, resonate with, in this read is that quality of discovering the meat of the life Gunnar led, and placing the pieces in order for yourself. While you're never left in doubt about your position in time, you're not going to get everything there is simply by that means.

I think it was a real, living person that I found in this novel. Would I have "liked" him? I don't think so. But I wouldn't have known him the way I do because Author Sjón showed him to me in this simple, elegant piece-by-piece fashion. I like novel-Gunnar a little bit. He was so very empty. He found something to fill what a human can't live without having full. AND it was something awful. Something vile, foul...but it filled the void.

I understand the souls whose quest to be Whole leads them in dark, ugly, despicable places that one fraction better.

Thank you, Author Sjón. I can get better at being a good version of me after this read. ( )

This is the second book I’ve read by this Icelandic author, the first being Moonstone: The boy who never was (2016). These are both very short books (novellas, actually) and both tell the stories of young men growing up in Reykjavík. And there the similarity ends. For while the earlier book had for a protagonist a young gay man who adored movies more than almost anything else, this book describes how a different boy, at a different time, can turn into a neo-Nazi. The book explains little and assumes a certain familiarity with the Second World War. For example, at one point the boy finally meets his aunt, who arrives just after the war from Norway. She had been described to him as being full of life, and beautiful, but instead he meets a deeply unhappy woman who has lost all her hair. In other words — though Sjón never says this — she almost certainly had a relationship with a German soldier during the occupation of her country, and was punished for it. This is not a simple story — nor was Moonstone — and features a challenging protagonist, but in the end I think it works. ( )