Máni is an orphan, living with a very old woman he believes to be his great-grandmother’s sister. It’s as if Sjón is saying, look, here it is, deal with it or take your hypocrisy away and don’t read my book. Although I admit to being a bit startled by the frankness of the opening scene in which sixteen year-old Máni Steinn “services” his “gentleman” I could soon see why it was there, and why it was there right on the opening page. The Reykjavik of Moonstone represents many places and many cultures in the way that it shows the hypocrisy and cruelty that surrounds young men coming to terms with their sexuality. Reykjavik is not then the ‘cool’ city of contemporary tourist brochures. The story is set in Iceland, as WW1 is drawing to a close, with the erupting volcano Katla raining dust upon the city and the Spanish flu about to wreak havoc on the population. That would have been a pity, because this novella is so superb at depicting attitudes to gays at the turn of the 20th century. And just out of idle curiosity, because there’s been discussion elsewhere about the importance of Amazon reviews, I checked the reviews for this title at The Big Behemoth and found that they were so inane I would not have contemplated reading this little gem if I had relied on them. I am indebted to two of my blogging friends for the discovery of this book: firstly Stu at Winston’s Dad for inroducing me to Sjón’s writing when I was a member of his Shadow Jury for the International Foreign Fiction Prize, and secondly Joe at Rough Ghosts for reviewing this particular title in such an enticing way.

Moonstone by sjón