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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Dec 2019, 304 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2020, 304 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Peggy Kurkowski
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The haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims.
A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter's day, a young student at the school watches the school's headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower.
Two decades later, the child—now a grown man, haunted by the past—calls the nun back to the scene of the crime. Seeking peace and calm in her twilight years at a convent in France, she has no choice to make a trip to Iceland again, a trip that brings her former visit, as well as her years as a young woman in Paris, powerfully and sometimes painfully to life. In Paris, she met an Icelandic girl who she has not seen since, but whose acquaintance changed her life, a relationship she relives all while reckoning with the mystery of August Franz's death and the abuses of power that may have brought it on.
In The Sacrament, critically acclaimed novelist Olaf Olafsson looks deeply at the complexity of our past lives and selves; the faulty nature of memory; and the indelible mark left by the joys and traumas of youth. Affecting and beautifully observed, The Sacrament is both propulsively told and poignantly written—tinged with the tragedy of life's regrets but also moved by the possibilities of redemption, a new work from a novelist who consistently surprises and challenges.
Excerpt
The Sacrament
He had committed a crime. While they were knitting he had allowed his mind to wander. He liked to let his thoughts drift to distant places, where there was no sadness and the nights were filled with pleasant dreams. Sometimes he would travel to the farm where he had spent the summer before last, to the barn, where he threw himself onto the hay, or to the stream, where brook trout hid beneath the banks. Sometimes he would lose himself in the comic books his father brought back from his voyages. But he never let his thoughts take him to the hospital or the cemetery.
She had snatched the knitting from him and ordered him to place his palms facedown on the table. His hands trembled slightly, but of course he obeyed. The other children pretended to be absorbed in their own work, but he could feel their eyes watching him, and her as she loomed over him.
Still you insist upon sullying yourself in the eyes of the Lord, she said, unraveling his work, the first tentative ...
Olafsson treats the uninitiated to rich depictions of endless horizons, mixed with bitter cold and blowing snowdrifts that swirl around one's vision until no light is seen...The Sacrament is a powerful exploration of faith and the crucial role that doubt plays in its inception and maintenance. With its reverent language of memory and regret, longing and loss, justice and vengeance, the book seeks to find its own answer to which is the greatest of these qualities: faith, hope and love...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski).
Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Little Faith
The Sacrament is a miraculous novel. A delicate, literary page-turner, narrated by an unforgettable character whose life the reader will long remember after the last page is turned. With austere and beautiful prose, Olafsson has written a novel full of love, mystery, and regret. Fantastic. Roger Rosenblatt
It's a rare story that marries the suspense of a mystery with depth of thought, but in The Sacrament, Olaf Olafsson manages this alliance with a scientist's mind and an artist's eye... One reads this novel both eager and wary of knowing its secret fully, like the meaning of a dream.
One of the main characters in The Sacrament is truly its setting: Iceland. Serving as the emotional nexus for multiple characters in the novel, it stamps the narrative with an authoritative and unyielding presence.
Iceland is a Nordic country located in the North Atlantic, an island that is the 18th largest in the world and Europe's second-largest after Great Britain. With roughly 332,000 residents, Iceland has the lowest population density in Europe. The country is about 40,000 square miles, and most settlements are located along the coastline with its magnificent fjords and harbors. The island's interior, also known as the Highlands, consists of sand, mountains and lava fields—the terrain and the cold make it largely uninhabitable....
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