Book Review | Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night

Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson is a quiet, meditative book that centers around daily lives of people in a small Icelandic village.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this book. No doubt, the story is beautifully written at the sentence level, but the plot itself was lacking for me. Much of the novel is about philosophizing about the nature of life and death and focuses on the relationships between characters, but beyond that, there isn’t much.

With all the mentions of strange dreams and inexplicable buzzing sounds, I had hoped the story was building up to lead into cosmic horror, but in the end, it doesn't go anywhere and the ending was unfortunately underwhelming me.

All in all, I think I would have preferred if the magical realism in this book was less subtle, but this might be a case of it’s not you, it’s me. Ultimately, this book just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Thank you, NetGalley and HarperVia, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Book Details:

Publication Date : September 7, 2021

Publisher : HarperVia

ISBN : 0063136473

Pages : 256

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