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Seldom does such a short book deliver such surprising delights as the new The Book of I, Scottish playwright David Grieg\u2019s first novel. Set in 825 on the tiny Scottish island of I \u2014 the original name of what is now known as Iona \u2014 it is as fresh and charming as any contemporary work this critic has read in ages.<\/p>\n
In large part, that\u2019s because The Book of I\u2019s characters are so unselfconsciously themselves. Yes, one is a Viking, accidentally left behind by the murderous raiding party that opens the action. Another is a timid monk, who survives the raid by humiliating means, and the third is a mead wife, the soon-to-be widow of the island\u2019s blacksmith, whose skill with the honey-based brew (and the bees who provide it) both heals and binds.<\/p>\n
Along the way, The Book of I deals with questions of faith and friendship, love and loyalty, and all the major themes that a novel starting with a slaughter and ending with, well, something close to redemption should tackle. But, along its way, the narrative is bloody and sharp and laugh-out-loud funny, with touches of poetry that flow as naturally as the tides.<\/p>\n
Take the aging Viking Grimur, for example. Early on Grimur recognizes that \u201cthe only skill he had left, the only gift that had been enriched by drink, age, and failure, was poetry.\u201d Falling into the image-heavy, broken-line form of Anglo-Saxon (Old English), he continues: \u201cThe sand of his mind beach was rich in words, the mead of Odin flowed in his breast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poetry, of the Anglo-Saxon kind, runs through this book. A battle is a \u201csword storm\u201d; a ship a \u201cwooden war-gull\u201d or a \u201cred-sailed wave horse.\u201d<\/p>\n
But for all its lyrical beauty, this is an earthy book. Una, the mead wife, is the most rooted of the small cast. A survivor, she comes to joy late (\u201cSmiling had not been part of Una\u2019s life\u201d), to find \u201c[t]he world \u2026 was an excited child, alive and demanding her attention.\u201d She\u2019s the one who sustains that world, with her mead, barley porridge, and the occasional mutton she cooks for Grimur, Martin the monk, and beautiful Sister Bronagh, a would-be anchorite who appears just in time to tempt the young monk\u2019s saintly resolve.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a bad thing on an island that has witnessed devastating violence and where life is not the easiest, and the three main characters soon fall into a comfortable rhythm. Seasons pass, Grimur toys with resuming his Viking ways, and the mystery of a saint\u2019s relic continues to haunt I. But even as the whales and puffins make their rounds, so too does humanity, all leading up to a final confrontation and, just maybe, something like peace for the small island.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood morning, life, you gorgeous bitch\u2014I\u2019m back!\u201d cries Grimur at one point. At a spare 160 pages, The Book of I will never be called wordy. But if this gem of a novel needed to be boiled down to one line, that would be it.<\/p>\n