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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
This book draws you in and at some point won't let you go. The pacing of Helgason's narrator was difficult to get comfortable with, these short sometimes seemingly conflicting memories and moments but once I settled into the pace I was hooked. Telling the story of a life deeply shaped by tragic and horrific events of WWII, the narrator waffles between a sympathetic character and a villain in her own words.
I've never read a book quite like this one. I laughed out loud. I cried. I had to put it down to give space for the horror. I was stunned into silence. I found myself needing to know the "whole" story. Helgason dives into heavy and painful aspects of life and love through the crass humor and unapologetic attitude of his narrator.
If you enjoy experiencing new ways of reading and digesting story, this book is rare treasure.
I've never read a book quite like this one. I laughed out loud. I cried. I had to put it down to give space for the horror. I was stunned into silence. I found myself needing to know the "whole" story. Helgason dives into heavy and painful aspects of life and love through the crass humor and unapologetic attitude of his narrator.
If you enjoy experiencing new ways of reading and digesting story, this book is rare treasure.
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was an interesting concept but would have been soooo much better if it was written by a woman or at least someone who liked women. The narrator and main character is not just unlikable she is written as downright nasty and yet she’s suffered more than any one person should ever have to. It almost feels like the author hates her and blames her for her own misfortunes, ultimately leading the narrative to be a scrambled mush mash of stories, all of which add up to a deeply broken person.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Rape
dark
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Woman at 1,000 Degrees by Hallgrímur Helgason (2018)
3 Stars
I read this for The StoryGraph Reads the World 2025 challenge for the Iceland prompt.
This was a tough book for me to read, it jumps around in the timeline and can be jarring. I really enjoyed the last 3rd of the book. Big trigger warnings for rape and child death as well.
3 Stars
I read this for The StoryGraph Reads the World 2025 challenge for the Iceland prompt.
This was a tough book for me to read, it jumps around in the timeline and can be jarring. I really enjoyed the last 3rd of the book. Big trigger warnings for rape and child death as well.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Rape
Woman at 1,000 Degrees skips through time, between 2009--when the narrator, Herra, is an old, dying woman living in a garage--and various epochs of her colorful past, much of which relate to her experiences as an Icelandic child living in Europe during WWII. Herra has (mostly) lived loudly and makes the reader envious of this old broad's badassery. There's depth to the story, though. Herra's tales of her 1950s-60s globetrotting lifestyle (including being an absent parent), her 2000s pastime of catfishing an Australian bodybuilder, and minor shenanigans as a kid in German-occupied Denmark give way to darker episodes of abuse and grief.
It is kind of cool to read a story set in WWII that is told from a different point of view than most of the stories we've heard before.
I was disappointed that the author decided to draw his protagonist as very sexually precocious. Herra has a history of infatuation with and a mature-sounding desire for various attractive men (as a tween) and, in the midst of wandering through wartime Germany and Poland trying to stay alive, our 14-year-old undocumented heroine attempts (unsuccessfully) to seduce a grown man whose language she does not speak. What chronically stressed-out teenage girl--a virgin, no less--is burning to fuck some stranger? Then, mere days after this man rapes her, she falls in love with a Nazi officer and successfully seduces him. While it is likely that the author intends to convey that the narrator is not entirely reliable and that her personal mythology has been heavily edited (for her own sake or that of the reader), the oversexed quality of the protagonist in these middle chapters feels like it is written to titillate a male readership or the author himself. It's gross.
It is kind of cool to read a story set in WWII that is told from a different point of view than most of the stories we've heard before.
I was disappointed that the author decided to draw his protagonist as very sexually precocious. Herra has a history of infatuation with and a mature-sounding desire for various attractive men (as a tween) and, in the midst of wandering through wartime Germany and Poland trying to stay alive, our 14-year-old undocumented heroine attempts (unsuccessfully) to seduce a grown man whose language she does not speak. What chronically stressed-out teenage girl--a virgin, no less--is burning to fuck some stranger? Then, mere days after this man rapes her, she falls in love with a Nazi officer and successfully seduces him. While it is likely that the author intends to convey that the narrator is not entirely reliable and that her personal mythology has been heavily edited (for her own sake or that of the reader), the oversexed quality of the protagonist in these middle chapters feels like it is written to titillate a male readership or the author himself. It's gross.
This is a beautifully written, powerful book peopled with characters of complexity and moral ambiguity. It perfectly illustrates how the scars of war translate to generational trauma, and is uncompromising in its portrayal of horrors and explanation of evil:
But no one was so desperately alone as the Führer. I doubt if any figure in history was ever as lonely as Adolph Hitler. He therefore insisted on everyone in his territories greeting him by name: 'Heil Hitler!' And never has so much been done to soothe the psychological hangups of one man. First a whole nation was turned into one giant birthday party in his honour, with everyone in their finest outfits and water-combed hair, both friends and foes sporting armbands for the sake of clarity, singing in his honour, showering him with gifts (generally their lives) and clicking to attention before him, forming giant birthday cakes and thrusting their arms in the air to symbolise candles, a thousand candles for the Millennial Reich, for the lonely little boy to blow out and boo at from his rostrum, his high chair: Adolph Hitler, the eternal birthday boy. But that wasn't enough, because after the cake the boy wanted to play with his tin soldiers, and get to use all his new toys...
Little Hjalti's solitude was so great, in fact, that it was a black hole, an over-famished vacuum that sucked in everything on its path, and constantly demanded new victims to prevent himself from being sucked into the hole. 'Never enough human sacrifices!' But once all the blood had been consumed, the black hole swelled up over his head and he drowned in his own isolation." (133-134)
This is brutally honest and painfully accurate. And although published in 2011, perfectly foreshadows what we are now experiencing with the second term of a certain orange man whose parents didn't hug him enough.
In other reviews, I have written that male authors don't write female characters as well as female authors write male characters. This book would be one exception to that observation. Helgason has created a protagonist who is believable in every way, from describing her own sexual desires to the pain of unrequited love and unwanted intrusions.
While there is plenty of heavy in the book, it is also at times hysterically funny. As an old woman, Herra's online escapades are laugh out loud hilarious, as are the consequences.
This is a love story, an adventure story, a tale of family dynamics, and the human condition.
But no one was so desperately alone as the Führer. I doubt if any figure in history was ever as lonely as Adolph Hitler. He therefore insisted on everyone in his territories greeting him by name: 'Heil Hitler!' And never has so much been done to soothe the psychological hangups of one man. First a whole nation was turned into one giant birthday party in his honour, with everyone in their finest outfits and water-combed hair, both friends and foes sporting armbands for the sake of clarity, singing in his honour, showering him with gifts (generally their lives) and clicking to attention before him, forming giant birthday cakes and thrusting their arms in the air to symbolise candles, a thousand candles for the Millennial Reich, for the lonely little boy to blow out and boo at from his rostrum, his high chair: Adolph Hitler, the eternal birthday boy. But that wasn't enough, because after the cake the boy wanted to play with his tin soldiers, and get to use all his new toys...
Little Hjalti's solitude was so great, in fact, that it was a black hole, an over-famished vacuum that sucked in everything on its path, and constantly demanded new victims to prevent himself from being sucked into the hole. 'Never enough human sacrifices!' But once all the blood had been consumed, the black hole swelled up over his head and he drowned in his own isolation." (133-134)
This is brutally honest and painfully accurate. And although published in 2011, perfectly foreshadows what we are now experiencing with the second term of a certain orange man whose parents didn't hug him enough.
In other reviews, I have written that male authors don't write female characters as well as female authors write male characters. This book would be one exception to that observation. Helgason has created a protagonist who is believable in every way, from describing her own sexual desires to the pain of unrequited love and unwanted intrusions.
While there is plenty of heavy in the book, it is also at times hysterically funny. As an old woman, Herra's online escapades are laugh out loud hilarious, as are the consequences.
This is a love story, an adventure story, a tale of family dynamics, and the human condition.
dark
sad
fast-paced
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated