Set in 1883, the book opens with “a daughter of Reynard,” a blue fox indistinguishable from the stone she is resting beside. She is keeping an eye on a pursuer hiding in a snowdrift.
He has not moved in the last 18 hours. Suddenly he receives a message telling him exactly how to intercept the fox.
“Had the man received a thought message from the vixen?”
The prose is spare. Snippets of text give the opening pages the appearance of poems. On one page there is a single sentence. The visual effect suggests, for me at least, the snowy landscape in which the story takes place.
II
The second part settles into a more conventional narrative, one that grows increasingly tangled and convoluted. It centres on Fridrik Fridjonsson, a herbalist and farmer who 17 years previously rescued Abba from prison.
(No, not the Swedish pop group.)
She's a woman with Down syndrome. Her full name is Halfdis Jonsdottir and she has just died. Her sweetheart, Halfdan Atlason, has come to collect the body. He is also "the Reverend Baldur's eejit."
Fridrik gives Halfdan a letter for Baldur, who is conducting the burial service. At the end of the letter Fridrik mentions that he has dreamed of a blue fox.
The tale retreats further into the past to explain how Abba arrived by shipwreck, and describes the strange bundle she carried with her for the rest of her life. Fridrik opens the bundle and finds 48 wooden tablets. When properly assembled they reveal a quote (in Latin) from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
III
The third section continues the book's opening thread. We now know more about the person hunting the blue fox.
The shot he fired triggers an avalanche that sweeps him under a glacier, along with the fox. He meets a young woman and the Well of Life. The fox revives, digs out the shotgun pellets from her body, and engages the man in a discussion of electricity.
What happens next is even more incredible.
IV
The final section takes the form of the letter that Fridrik wrote to a friend. It sheds some light on the connection between Abba and the hunter.
Sjon
The author is a poet, playwright, and singer who has performed with Bjork. More about him can be found on his website.
The Blue Fox was first published in 2004. The English translation by Victoria Cribb appeared in 2008, and clocks in at 112 pages.
