Samhengi hlutanna
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Samhengi hlutanna ('the context of things') is an Icelandic novel by Sigrún Davíðsdóttir.[1] It is a thriller set in the aftermath of the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis, focusing on the efforts of the protagonist, Arnar Finnsson, to complete the last book and, eventually, solve the murder of his dead partner Hulda.
Samhengi hlutanna is a first-person crime thriller, written in the voice of Arnar Finnsson, an Icelander who has abandoned a career as a lawyer to move to London and become an artist and illustrator. A large proportion of the book is direct speech, as the main characters work their way from one informant to another, and process the information they receive in conversations between themselves. To a large extent their interviews form a series of set-piece case studies of different sections of Iceland's boom-time business community, each reflecting on the Crash from their own perspective. It has been suggested that Sigrún's writing is strongest when portraying Arnar's inner life and the colourful characters he encounters, but becomes rather stilted when dealing with financial detail.[2]
Rather than being divided into chapters as such, the narrative is simply punctuated by headings stating the date whenever a new day begins (in the abbreviated format '2.4. (fö.)' (i.e. '2 April (föstudagur [Friday])'). Whenever the city where the action takes place shifts between London and Reykjavík, the setting is announced on an otherwise blank page. As Jón Karl Helgason has pointed out, much of the novel corresponds closely with real life: thus it features HK banki, Eyjabanki and Sleipnir, which seem straightforwardly to be ciphers for KB banki, Landsbanki and Glitnir, and the investment funds Hringur and Delilah, recalling Baugur Group and Samson holdings. The book invites interpretation, then, as a roman à clef.[3] Indeed, commentators have noted that, as a female Icelandic journalist in London investigating the Crash, Hulda can be seen as a cipher for Sigrún herself.[4][5]
In the analysis of Jón Karl Helgason, 'as a thriller, the narrative gets going rather slowly, but for those who have an interest in and a general acquaintance with developments in Icelandic business life in recent years, on the other hand, it is intriguing to note how closely the author sticks to reality in her writing'.[6] Sigrún can be understood as working to make the financial complexities of the Icelandic Crash accessible to a wider audience unlikely to read the lengthy official report, while also using novellistic form to explore the possibility of financial crime that her investigative journalism led her to suspect but that could not be proven. Finally, the novel allows her to inhabit the voices and views of different people on the Crash.[7] The same perspectives have been suggested by Sigrún's own commentary on writing the novel,[8] though she has emphasised the fictionality of the work,[9] and that evidence of money laundering in the Icelandic banks has not come to light, with the relevant suspicious behaviour being attributable to 'abysmally bad management'.[10]