Review by Booklist Review
ldquo;Spending one's life alone is not so easy to accomplish," notes an alienated Sven Ormson. In 1916, with help from his beloved sister, Olga, he escapes crowded Stockholm for Spitsbergen, an arctic island in the Svalbard archipelago. Sven's mining job ends abruptly when a cave-in causes a disfiguring injury. He then serves first as steward to a shell-shocked British officer and later finds his calling as a hunter and trapper with the tutelage of a Finnish socialist. Sven's icy solitude is interrupted when Olga's daughter arrives with a newborn. Irascible and eccentric, Sven One-Eye's bonds may be few, yet they are deep and anchoring. In his first novel, Miller's prose is lit by sparks of Sven's somber humor and descriptive elegance as his settlement in this harsh if dramatic landscape is likened to a barnacle clinging to a rock relentlessly assaulted by a frigid blue-black sea. Miller's characterization is exceptional and thoroughly engaging, as are the vividly portrayed island denizens, an array of Swedes, Norwegians, Brits, Finns, and Russians. Stockholm Sven was a historical person about whom almost nothing is known; Miller has given him an imagined life told in his own words in this engrossing fictional memoir.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Miller's captivating debut bears out its eponymous narrator's observation that "a life is substantially more curious, and mundane, than the reports would have it." Sven Ormson, an indolent Swedish mill worker with a spotty employment history and a fascination with polar exploration, decides in 1916, at age 32, to take on a two-year contract mining coal on the island of Spitsbergen on the edge of the Arctic Sea. Before his contract is up he loses an eye during an avalanche, an event that convinces the already misanthropic Sven to shun further contact with fellow humans. So begins his apprenticeship as a trapper during the harsh winter months when all but three other hunters have left his portion of the island. Though Sven keeps to himself as much as possible, inevitable friendships and family ties eventually draw him into contact with others, even as his life remains relatively untouched by historical events unfolding just beyond his sphere for the next 30 years. Miller offers a marvelously detailed look at a way of life and a profession practiced in an extreme environment, and though purportedly based on a historical figure, the character's colorfully rendered experiences are the stuff of powerful dramatic fiction. This has Miller off to a promising start. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth, Aevitas Creative Management. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In Sisters of the Great War, Missouri Review Editors' Prize winner Feldman crafts the story of ambitious young American Ruth Duncan--she wants to be a doctor--and her shy sister, Elise, who volunteer their services in war-torn 1914 Europe and discover love, nurse Ruth with an Englishman in the medical corps and Elise with another woman in the ambulance corps (50,000-copy first printing). In The Book of Magic, which concludes Hoffman's "Practical Magic" series, three generations of Owens women and a long-lost brother attempt to break the curse that has bound their family since Maria Owens practiced the Unnamed Art centuries ago (200,000-copy first printing). Launched with lots of in-house love, multi-AP-award-winning Miller's The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven features a young man who seeks adventure by moving to an Arctic archipelago in 1916, then withdraws further to an isolated fjord, where he's sustained by a loyal dog and letters from home until the arrival of an unexpected visitor (50,000-copy first printing). In a follow-up to Morris's multi-million-best-selling The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey, Three Sisters--Livia, Magda, and Cibi--survive Auschwitz and escape the Germans during the 1945 death march from the camp (500,000-copy first printing). In Saab's debut, Polish resistance fighter Maria is imprisoned in Auschwitz and forced by brutal camp deputy Fritzsch to play chess for his entertainment--and her life; the war's approaching resolution brings Maria closer to The Last Checkmate and a chance to avenge the deaths of her family (150,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). Following up The Wicked Redhead with The Wicked Widow, Williams zigzags between 1925 New York, where brassy, flashy flapper Geneva "Gin" Kelly happily settles into a high-society marriage to (of all things) a Prohibition agent, and 1998, with troubled Ella Dommerich relying on Gin's ghostly help when her aunt pushes her to discover anything nasty she can about an old family enemy running for president (75,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing).
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Swedish trapper relates his unique life with insights about friendship, hardship, and solitude. Sven Ormson lives in a tiny cabin in Spitsbergen, a Scandinavian island with precious little between it and the North Pole. In 1917, he'd suffered grotesque injury to his face in a mining avalanche and acquired one of his nicknames, Sven One-Eye. Some turn away from the sight of him in disgust, though he has a circle of friends and family. "I resolved to spend my life alone," he writes. So he's drawn to the monastic life of a trapper and appears content with books, correspondence with his sister, Olga, and the occasional company of folks like the Scotsman Charles MacIntyre, who sees in Sven a "fellow bibliophile" perhaps "in need of a friend." So Sven is seldom alone for long stretches. He is self-deprecating about "the topographic eccentricities" of his face that to some were a "nauseous curiosity." But he seems not terribly bothered by it or by the fact that some call him Sven the Seal Fucker. "You look like a bear chewed you up and shat you out," he's told. "You were never very handsome to begin with." Fortunately, he disdains pity, "the only thing worse than flagrant antagonism." And he's modest about his skills: "I trapped with something that outshone total incompetence," sometimes proceeding "tentatively like an old lady upon cobblestones." The arctic climes must breed self-reliance and toughness, which are evident even in Sven's two dogs, memorable characters themselves. His first canine, Eberhard, is "a fractious, willful brute" that is sometimes his only companion. Meanwhile, Europe convulses in two world wars, and he'll be lucky if the madness of civilization doesn't affect him. Sven's ugliness is only skin-deep, and readers will love the beauty and depth of his story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
