Miss Iceland

Product Information

One national competition for Icelandic women with multiple opportunities for national and international representation. BUT THIS BOOK is one of the most harrowing, powerful, and imaginative books novels I’ve read this year! In “Butterflies in November”, a woman turns her back on her worries and heads off with her best friend’s deaf-mute son, her three goldfish and her recent lottery winnings on a zany yet enlightening Icelandic road-trip. Miss Universe Iceland organization was also awarded the Miss Supranational Iceland franchise in 2019. She is the mother of Unnur Birna Vilhjálmsdóttir who won the Miss Iceland pageant in 2005 and became Miss World 2005.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. A stolid traditional farmer, his faith in his daughter’s literary ability and steadfast support is touching. Hekla is offered and encouraged, more than once, to compete for the crown of Miss Iceland, a more achievable goal and fitting role for a woman.Hekla spends the majority of her time with either Isey or Jon John, listening to their plights and their misery; slowly being ground down by the realities of life for anyone who was not born male and heterosexual. Her husband named Hekla without consulting her, and consigned the family to a farming life in a countryside she hates.

Hekla is fully able to rescue herself, yet her life isn’t able to be fulfilled yet, as she’s burning too bright, too early.The only thing I didn't like was the ending of the book- I felt a bit frustrated by it, but I think that was because it wasn't a 'happily ever after' type scenario. She possesses an inner calm that is at odds with her volcanic namesake, but offers readers an inspirational example of a woman who knows what she wants – whether it’s a man in her life for a few months, or eight hours a day for writing – and pursues her desires with neither doubt nor apology. She has a good woman friend with whom she grew up but this friend is now trapped in marriage and motherhood. It’s not just how the men at the dining room treat Hekla, but more importantly how her poet boyfriend treats her like she’s nothing but a pretty face and a muse.

Reality might be biting at Hekla’s heels, but what makes her such an endearing protagonist is her inability to stop writing. Helka, trying to make it in the big city, a woman in 1960's Reykjavik weighed down by expectation and constraint.

Founded in 2018 by Willow Heath and Jess Esa, Books and Bao curates the most recent global and translated fiction, poetry, and graphic novels alongside inspiring cultural journeys. She and Hekla remain loyal friends but their exchanges underscore in poignant detail how marriage and motherhood have curtailed Isey’s opportunities. I’ve been a book reviewer for a number of years and have posted hundreds of reviews on both Goodreads and LibraryThing.

This book is the story of every woman full to bursting with artistic expression and marvellous potential who is quashed by meaningless patriarchal rules born out of fear, hate, aggression, and sadism. The title and the cover are all meant as an irony to the women’s condition in the 1960’ Iceland, where they were expected only to look good and respond positively to the advances of men. Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir was born in Iceland in 1958, studied art history in Paris and has lectured in History of Art at the University of Iceland. Her novels have been translated into over 25 languages and among them are The Greenhouse and Butterflies in November.Eventually, she links up with a poet about 10 years older than she is; unbeknownst to her poet-lover, she produces a novel while he produces a couple of poems. Most people in my life have never been so it's just my wife and I gushing back and forth to each other! It’s still dark so we sit on a bench in the waiting room of the station, waiting for the fireball to rise above the curved horizon and the world to assume a form. As the story progresses, Hekla becomes less and less delineated, her works get lost “out in the sea”, sent to publishers who never respond when they learn that a woman is the author of such unusual style. There is Jón John, the skilled fashion designer who is forced to work as a sailor, because which "real man" does sew dresses?