The Tricking Of Freya

Her words swirl your mind, a vast milky way of glittery word-stars, most of it far beyond your grasp, but you’re use to that, to being drawn into word-spells that riff like the jazz music she plays on her phonograph late at night. But sped up, 78 rpm, talking faster than the speed of light. Getting talky your mother calls it.  Birdie’s getting talky. Sometimes Birdie gets so talky she stops making sense.  That’s when your mother says Birdie is going over. Over what? But not tonight. You hear logic in Birdie’s voice even if you can’t follow it. (pg. 4)

The Tricking of Freya, Christina Sunley’s debut novel, is a long letter written by Freya to her cousin; a cousin she never knew about until Freya was in her thirties. The letter describes how, at the age of seven, Freya and her mother travel to Gimli, a small town in Canada, to meet Freya’s grandmother and aunt, her mother’s sister Birdie. Freya and her family are descended from Icelanders who immigrated to Canada when a volcano rendered their land in Iceland unusable. Descended from poets, words and language are very important to Birdie and, eventually to Freya herself.

The first part of the book documents Freya meeting with and interacting with these new relatives every summer for seven years.  The letter also goes on to illustrate the good and bad days of her aunt Birdie and Sunley, beautifully describes Freya’s mercurial aunt – her charisma, her venom, and her almost magnetic draw to the young girl and vice-versa.  Birdie is very connected to her Icelandic heritage and introduces Freya to the language, history, literature, and lore of Iceland.

After a disastrous trip to Iceland, Freya doesn’t see her relatives for many years. It is only her Grandmother’s hundredth birthday that brings her back to Gimli and she learns of a family secret that sends her back to the country of her heritage to try and untangle the threads of her family’s life.  The final part of the book covers this trip to Iceland and Freya eventually uncovers all the “tricks” people have played on her and she also gains a greater understanding of her own nature in the process.

Freya is very bitter about life and feels responsible for what has happened to her mother and to Birdie, a responsibility that leads to a great deal of guilt and unworthiness.  In the beginning, this bitterness threatens to overtake the novel but once you get deeper into Freya’s story, the reasons behind the bitterness are explained and you feel for this young girl who was unable to lay her burdens down.

This book is so entwined with Iceland, the ethos of its people and the land so much so that the land almost becomes a character.  There are many Icelandic words, however I would just skim the word to get a sense so I was able to maintain a flow. If you are someone who needs to read word for word, the Icelandic language may make the book a little jerky.

Take beautiful passages like: What I fear most is not that I won’t be able to remember the trip with Birdie but that I will. It is wedged deep in my memory, lodged in the nether-crevice that separates not remembering from forgetting.  And then add the unique and wondrous landscape of Iceland, guilt, memory, and family secrets, and they all combine for a lustrous first novel.  I look forward to seeing what Christina Sunley comes up with next.

And check out the cover art – one of the most unique and beautiful covers I have come across lately.

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