The second book I’ve decided to share my thoughts on:
#Review of 📌The Polar Circle (sometimes listed as The Arctic Circle) by Liza Marklund.
📌Genre: #crime_fiction #thriller
📌Book story: now I know that it’s the first book in The Polar Circle trilogy, however I’ve read it as a standalone and wasn’t aware of two other installments, although briefly checking out the description, I think this book is ok to read on its own as well. Partially the story happens in the deepest north of Sweden in the 80s and based on Marklund’s bio — that’s exactly where and when she spent her teens.
📌My rating: #Ok
📌Initial impression: honestly, I was looking forward to reading what I believed to be a light-ish Scandinavian crime fiction. Boy, was I wrong. As for other expectations, I wanted to read about a book club — that I got in full.
📌What I loved: the simplicity of the language. The time jumps between now and the 80s. I particularly enjoyed trying to find the connection between the books the girls had chosen for the Arctic Book Club and the way the chapter played out. The detective plotline was engaging enough, although I managed to figure out a lot of the ending rather quickly (somewhere by the end of 1-2 chapters). Although I tread with caution when I see more than 2 main characters, here I loved this feature, as well as time jumps.
📌What I didn't like: gloomy atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, I love scandic crime fiction as much as the next guy, but here it was a bit overboard. Or maybe I’ve just read it at a wrong point of life.
📌Final thoughts: I enjoyed reading parts of it, but I’m not gonna reread. Thanks to The Polar Circle I’ve realised that for me there is a thing as too realistic day-to-day life. Especially when for some parts of it (clearly, to shock the reader) the author chooses the crudest synonyms possible. But for me, it’s just «Yuck!» and reeks of a language of run-of-the-mill fanfiction. What’s more, I pitied most characters here, but didn’t really care for Wiking. Imagine my surprise when I found out that he is the centre of two other books in the trilogy.
Also, if you’re looking for ideas for your to-read list, here is one, of the works chosen in this book for the last Club meetings:
📕Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov;
📕Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley;
📕Cop Killer by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö;
📕The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain;
📕The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.
This time I’d like to share some quotes, too:
People who are unable to say anything intelligible should not be given a stage and microphone.
The regime always claims that Sweden is a wonderful country. However, we all know that we are being lied to.
Once Verity (or The Truth) has appeared to a person, it’s practically impossible for him to go back to the former state of blindness and naïvety.