Children in Reindeer Woods
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Eleven-year-old Billie's orphanage surprisingly ends up in the middle of a war zone. When a small group of paratroopers kill everyone who lives there, Billie is forced to learn to live with the violent, innocent, and troubled Rafael, who decides to abandon the soldier's life and become a farmer.
About this Author
Lytton Smith is a poet and translator, and a founding member of Blind Tiger Poetry. His book, The All-Purpose Magical Tent was published by Nightboat. His poems and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic, The Believer, and Boston Review.
Reviews
"Children In Reindeer Woods, Kristín Ómarsdóttir's first novel to be translated from Icelandic into English, remains unsettling to the very end. . . . The eventual payoff is profound and rewarding."--World Literature Today
"An assured introduction to her work. . . . Ómarsdóttir's skills as a poet and playwright are particularly evident in the deranged and strangely affecting soap-opera dialogue Billie invents for her dolls, Sara and Ragga."--Helen Oyeyemi, New York Times
"Without a doubt, Children in Reindeer Woods is Kristín Ómarsdóttir's best novel to date, and that's saying a lot. . . . Her gifts come fully into their own in a story, also a polemic against war, handled with mastery."--Hrund Ólafsdóttir
"The novel is often hilarious--but the undercurrent is heavy. . . . A complicated and fragile world where playing with Barbie dolls and guns go side by side."--Erna Erlingsdóttir, TMM
"A literary allegory filled with truths and absurdities about the human condition."--Kirkus Reviews
"Children in Reindeer Woods is a modernist page-turner with a bizarre but compelling plot."--Lisa Sanders, Belletrista
"Children in Reindeer Woods is sharp, spare, and edgy with tension. Ómarsdóttir shows an incredible skill for translating the intentions behind questionable actions; this book will surely pull readers out of their comfort zone into an active quest for what is real."--Rain Taxi
"When we read great, timeless literature (which is what I'm sure this novel will turn out to be), works that disturb as they soothe, offer hope as they crush it--we too, like Billie, are 'getting practice in contradictions.'"--The Rumpus
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