{"id":5721,"date":"2024-01-31T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T12:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5721"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:41:53","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:41:53","slug":"johana-gustawsson-yule-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/31\/johana-gustawsson-yule-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Johana Gustawsson: Yule Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yule Island<\/em> (2023, tr: David Warriner, 2023), is Johana Gustawsson\u2019s first novel set wholly in Sweden since relocating there from her native France. Taking on Nordic mythology to furnish its underlying mystery, it\u2019s a crime thriller with a dark streak. It\u2019s the sort of book that thrives on being fast-paced and the choice of first-person present tense adds an immediacy to its situations, even if it leaves less time to wallow in the characters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emma is an antique expert sent to appraise the value of the Gussman family home on the island of Storholmen and, after an accident with a hairbrush, discovers a note that suggests someone may be in distress. But the book also follows the fortunes of Viktoria, a housmaid working at the island home, and Karl, the detective assigned to a murder case that appears to have ritual undertones, nine years after a similar killing. All three are spun into a Viking braid that tightens as the story develops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As plots go, it\u2019s forgivably slow in getting going as its puts its pieces in place, but by the end, Gustawsson is turning out twists that mostly catch you unawares but, when you think back, make sense as they\u2019ve been lightly suggested along the way. Although one narrator withholds using a name until a major twist and is only too happy to use it after that, which feels a bit cheeky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I did find the book was not without its problems. Maybe it\u2019s the Swedish midwinter chill that means Yule Island does not wear its research lightly. There are times when things just slip into Wikipedia mode: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Bjorn pulls a tin of snus from his pocket, takes out a tiny pouch of tobacco and tucks it under his lip. Chewing snus is second only to golf as a national pastime, and it\u2019s the reason why only five percent of Swedes are regular smokers. We love our sacrosanct chewing tobacco so much that we only agreed to join the European Union if we could keep it. It\u2019s banned from sale in all the other member countries.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When one character is expounding on secret passages, in another longueur, someone else suggests that it \u201csounds like something out of The Da Vinci Code<\/em>\u201d. It does. Both the mystery and the data dumps. At least the Norse folklore is delivered through some back-and-forth dialogue even if it\u2019s real audience seems clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a French writer, writing a book set in Sweden, it\u2019s expected that the intended French readership may not be hot on Scandinavian geography, but it\u2019s clearly an issue of narrative when two Swedish characters are conversing about something domestic and always pitching it as if to an outsider (\u201cKristanstad. That\u2019s in the county of Scania, near the Danish border.\u201d) or \u201cSwedish prime minister\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, it\u2019s an effective exercise in plotting and misdirection, and with a varied cast to keep it interesting. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be an enjoyable read for those who all but inhale crime thrillers with a Nordic flavour or gothic touch. But the narrative choice never gelled with me here, and that it goes too heavy on making its characters mouthpieces for unnecessary trivia also, ahem, runed<\/em> it for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yule Island (2023, tr: David Warriner, 2023), is Johana Gustawsson\u2019s first novel set wholly in Sweden since relocating there from her native France. Taking on Nordic mythology to furnish its underlying mystery, it\u2019s a crime thriller with a dark streak. It\u2019s the sort of book that thrives on being fast-paced and the choice of first-person Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gustawsson-johana"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/9781914585975-scaled-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1uh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5721"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5778,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721\/revisions\/5778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}