History. A Mess.
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
While studying a seventeenth-century diary, the protagonist of Little Dark Room uncovers information about the first documented professional female artist. This discovery promises to change her academic career, and life in general . . . until she realizes that her "discovery" was nothing more than two pages stuck together. At this point there's no going back though, and she goes to great lengths to hide her mistake—undermining her sanity in the process. A shifty, satirical novel that's funny and colorful, while also raising essential questions about truth, research, and the very nature of belief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Early in this rewarding novel from P lsd ttir, the author's first English translation, the unnamed protagonist makes a startling discovery while transcribing a diary for her thesis, learning that her subject, a 17th-century British artist known only as S. B., was a woman, making her the earliest known prominent female painter in Western art. But after writing 600 pages and relocating with her husband, Hans, from England to their homeland of Iceland, the narrator finds a previously missed diary entry that throws her discovery into doubt. Pummeled by stress and intense headaches that result in hallucinations, she steals the rogue page, takes refuge in a closet in her new apartment, and tries to figure out her next step, all as family and friends welcome her back to town. P lsd ttir writes with the hand of a mystery author and the mind of a postmodernist, teasing out her protagonist's problem while playing with literary forms, fragmenting timelines, and injecting fierce irony. This is a complex, winding tale; the ride is rich with character and rumination.
