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Apr
15
Book Review: The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley
2009 at 1pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Recently published March 2009 by St. Martin’s Press
Freya Morris is doing her best to live her life in the dark. She rents a basement apartment in New York City (it was supposed to be “temporary,” but she’s been there for eight years now), spends her days developing photographs in a darkroom, and has few friends. She hasn’t always been this way, though. As a child, Freya loved words and was fascinated by language. She memorized poems and fell in love with books and dreamed of becoming a writer.
You can’t imagine not wanting it. Words live inside you, rearranging themselves in your mind like building blocks.
But that was all before.
The Tricking of Freya is a first-person narrative that Freya is writing as a letter to a cousin she never knew she had. Freya starts her story at the beginning, telling her cousin (and us) about her childhood in Connecticut and the summers she spent visiting her grandmotehr Sigga and her aunt Birdie in Gimli, the “New Iceland” community of immigrants near Manitoba, Canada. She describes a horrible accident that leaves her mother changed forever, and she tells us about her enchantment with the seemingly glamorous Birdie, whose unpredictability, spontaneity, and rapidly shifting moods—manifestations of her bipolar disorder— make her both fascinating and frightening.
…nothing was ever typical. Not where Birdie was concerned.
It is Birdie who encourages Freya’s love of language, who teachers her to speak Icelandic and tells her stories of the family’s history, who reminds her that she is the granddaughter of Iceland’s great poet Olafur, and who helps her feel that she can escape from her otherwise lonely existence. But it is also Birdie who confuses Freya and hurts her feelings and takes her on a terrifying trip to Iceland that becomes the defining moment, the experience on which everything else rests, of her young life.
Freya describes being caught up as both an accomplice in and a victim of one of Birdie’s mania-induced plans:
Birdie got talky again. Explaining, justifying, blaming, scheming. Shouting things at me over her shoulder and above the wind. Establishing the germ of delusion that in the coming days would mutate in countless directions, forming plots and subplots and archplots, holy synchronicities and malevolent coincidences.
Now, at almost thirty years old, Freya is still trying to make sense of the experiences that have shaped her life, and, to complicate things even further, she has just overheard guests at her grandmother’s 100th birthday party whispering about a child she never knew Birdie had, a child she assumes must have been given up for adoption. It is this search for her unknown cousin that drives Freya to uncover the secrets of her family’s history, reveal the memories she has long tried to forget, and try to put some of her proverbial ghosts to rest.
I myself am a devout nothing. The only thing I am certain of is that death in no way prevents the dead from interfering with the living. They’re haunters, my dead, hangers-on.
Christina Sunley’s debut novel, The Tricking of Freya is a beautifully, creatively written exploration of the intricacies and intimacies of family and the impact of experiences that defy comprehension. Sunley blends Icelandic history and mythology into this engrossing narrative with great ease, and she provides just the right amount of detail—enough to make the information relatable and relevant, not so much that it becomes distracting or boring.
Sunley’s writing style is unique, and there is a wonderful rhythm and movement to her language. You can feel her words and just know what she is trying to say. Freya’s fascination with language and the joy she derives from playing with words add color and emotion to her story, and I just loved the literature and poetry played such an important role in her family’s history and her developing sense of self. The Tricking of Freya is at once fantastic and wholly believable. It has a pleasing mix of plot- and character-driven elements, and I recommend it to all readers of literary fiction. This is a story you haven’t heard before, and it’s one you won’t want to miss. 4.25 out of 5.
Visit the author’s website and blog to learn more.
Thanks to Monica at St. Martin’s for recommending this wonderful new book.
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[...] Book Review: The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley [...]
There’s something about Sunley’s writing style that I really like and I’m not sure what it is…
excellent review! I will have to check this out, it sounds fascinating…and I know that I am shallow, but I love the cover!
Not at all what I was expecting, but it still sounds wonderful!
Thanks for the review! I was contacted about reviewing this book and it’s on the way. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Glad you liked this one! I have it and will be reading it soon.
[...] week, I reviewed The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley (loved it!) and featured a guest review from my friend Kristen of Bad Mother by [...]
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I enjoyed your review of the novel. My take on the book did not include her excellent writing. Hope you will visit my review at Tricking of Freya: interview and review.
[...] [...]
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