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The Creator

The Creator
Author
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir
Publisher
Portobello Books
Place
London
Year
2012
Category
English translations
Review Author
Björn Halldórsson

(Skaparinn, 2008)

The Creator is filled with damaged people. Sveinn is an isolated and lonely master craftsman who makes high-quality silicone sex dolls that he sells to other lonely men for companionship and sexual release. His simple life becomes hopelessly complicated by a chance encounter with Lóa, a mother of two on the brink of a nervous breakdown due to her daughter Margrét’s frightening anorexia and social phobia.

In a misguided spurt of motherly love, Lóa steals one of Sveinn’s sex dolls, intending to use it to help her daughter overcome her revulsion of all things physical by providing her with an unobtrusive companionship; a friend who will not and cannot judge her. The theft leads to a further mingling of their two lives, expertly captured by Guðrún Eva through a split perspective narrative that brings to the forefront, sometimes humorously and sometimes tragically, the incomprehension that is so often at the core of human interactions.

For more than twenty years, Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir has been one of the most interesting, challenging and innovative author Iceland has to offer – with a dozen books to her name and numerous awards and nominations, including the 2011 Icelandic Literature Prize. Although it is one of her most intriguing books, the fact that The Creator is her only work currently available in the English language is a sign of a remarkable lost opportunity for the English-speaking publishing world.