The most beautiful word in their language, according to Icelanders, is the one used to refer to midwives. A term which literally means “mother of light”. This is how this new novel by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir begins, all smooth and poetic.
His parents, meanwhile, run an undertaker’s business. It is therefore a long family tradition to take care of the human being, says Dýja, both at the beginning of his life and when he arrives “at his final destination”: “The maternal branch takes the man in. charge when the light turns on and the paternal branch takes over when it turns off. ”
As December buries Reykjavik in the shadows, the young woman immerses herself in her great-aunt’s observations – on conception, birth, life, death… Mingled with her own reflections gathered over the hundreds of births she attended. Birth, “the most perilous experience in the life of a human being,” because there are those deliveries that the child does not survive, and those that the mother never fully recovers from.
But what is human life worth in the face of the magnificence of the animal kingdom and the vastness of nature that surrounds it? In addition, in an island like Iceland, where storms can be incredibly violent – like the one that Dýja’s sister, a meteorologist, fears at the approach of Christmas -, and where the power of animals – cetaceans, birds migratory… – offers a show all year round?
Through the writings of her great aunt, a great wisdom is revealed which explores the meaning of life, of chance, of this force called light that all living beings seek, from animals to plants. The truth about light is surely one of the most contemplative novels of the Icelandic writer, and without a doubt the one who pushes her existential reflections to the maximum by putting the essence of the human in perspective. Certainly one of those precious books that one takes pleasure in annotating, reading and rereading slowly, and in which the slightest passage reveals a new depth with each rereading.
The truth about light
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
Zulma
224 pages