The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness

Name: Halldór Laxness

Year Won: 1955

Read: "The Fish Can Sing"

Original Language: Icelandic

Reason: "for his vivid epic power, which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland"

About: "The Fish Can Sing" is a coming of age story in which an orphan grows up in a lovely farm in Iceland. He eventually meets an opera singer who no one has ever heard sing (even though he's famous) and forms a friendship with him. (Although this felt like a minor part of the story compared with the orphan's every day experiences.)

What I liked: The story has a wonderfully weird sense of humor. (It begins with, "A wise man once said thta next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." If this kind of humor is your thing, this is the book for you!) And the descriptions of Iceland are wonderful.

What I Disliked: The zany voice wore on me after a while. It was fun for about 50 pages, then I found it to be a bit of a slog. Also, this isn't a plot heavy story, which can make it feel more like some great humor and zany descriptions than a conventional story with a beginning and end.

Should it have won a Nobel: Probably. I think the voice wore on me, but it is unique and clever. I didn't love it in the way I did some of those on this list, but it was solidly better than a number and quite unique.

Next Up: "The Poet and the Sea" by Juan Ramon Jiménez