Olaf Olafsson's Walking into the Night will draw inevitable comparisons to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, both of which have butlers as their protagonists. While both deal with conflicted manservants' inner anxieties and failures in the midst of a changing global crisis—Ishiguro's novel focuses on the build up to the Second World War in Britain whereas Olafsson's focuses on the years just prior to this in America, emphasizing more the Depression's impact on celebrities—they are very different in their treatment of their protagonists' inner lives.Stevens, in The Remains of the Day, has reflections about his childhood, but his anxieties and stalemates are located uncannily in his place of work. By contrast, Kristjan's reflections are of a lost world that is no longer available to him geographically or emotionally, except in dreams and memories. I could say more about the two novels' similarities and differences, but I suppose that would then see me repeated the critical move of joining the two so simply and irrevocably. I think that any novel that has a male butler as its protagonist, especially given the brilliant portrayal of Stevens's conflict by Ishiguro, will always be compared to The Remains of the Day. Ishiguro has, in essence, created a subgenre all his own, then.To return to Olafsson:Kristjan is unfailing at his duties as Chief Hearst's butler, but his nagging conscience, the mistakes that he has made in the past, his regrets and his isolation (not least of which is underscored by his choice to move from Iceland to California, from a job of power to a job of service) soon interfere with his typically by-rote existence at the San Simeon castle.In stark, spare, and unrelentingly gutting prose, Olafsson shifts the point of view here in a way that gives the reader increasing glimpses into the interior life of his main character, and then by turns to Elisabet, the woman whom he has left behind and to whom he writes letters he will never send. The idea of confession is very intriguing here: how the person to whom Kristjan feels he must confess is the one person he will never see again.Bleak but beautifully imagined, Walking into the Night is a meditation on love, loss, and the myriad regrets we make as we go on about our lives. Olafsson is a master at rendering place, especially outdoor scenes, and also in insisting on how tiny gestures (the closing of a door, the gathering of blossoms, a finger tracing a lover's spine) can convey the emotional and psychological states of people more succinctly and accurately than words can.
I enjoyed the poetic language in this book, the cast of historical characters, the era between the world wars, and the bold freedom of the protagonist. His faults and introversion as well as his accomplishments and polite charm aggravate and awe the reader. For reasons probably only the protagonist knows, he surprisingly leaves his Icelandic family and the family's profitable business for a New York romance before taking on the job of butler to William Randolph Hearst. In California, the reader meets Hearst and Marion Davies. Though Davies makes more than an appearance in the novel in relation to Hearst, the Wikipedia article better illustrates her film career. The book's themes range from flying like a bird and drawing birds to persistent memories and reinventing oneself. Mention of the book's title comes on page 143:"I couldn't say goodbye to you. I couldn't bring myself to. still less did it occur to me to lie to you about my intentions. I left during the night while you were all asleep. Walked out into the darkness before dawn, stepped into it, vanished."He steps into darkness, into fire, into a new life. With his wife, his adult son, with his tycoon employer, he would evade discomforting truths. At the same time, his assertive actions can and do save the day more than once. Memories catch up with him, motivating his unsent explanatory letters, until word of his heroic butler's deeds reaches the characters who want to find him.
Do You like book Walking Into The Night (2003)?
Since reading the author’s brilliant The Journey Home, I’ve wanted to read more from him; this was no disappointment. Again we have an unapologetic person examining long-ago decisions. Christian is not a likeable man; he has left his wife and children in Iceland and come to the US for the love of an exotic dancer, an equally unlikeable character. Left alone, he finds his solace at San Simeon, running the estate of another unlikeable character: William Randolph Hearst. With no one around to win Ms/Mr Congeniality, Olafsson pins his story on connecting the threads between past and present while juxtaposing two men of similar self-interest, whether they are building a business, jettisoning a family, or blind to all but a woman. Of course, if one has money, one is merely eccentric; without funds, one is an outcast.
—Jeansue Libkind
This is an extremely sad and very well-written novel, based on the life of an Icelandic man who ended up as the butler for WR Hearst. It is very sad because the main character makes choices in his life that affect everything. He is definitely not a bad man. His fatal flaw is believing he can find happiness. And, he has definitely never been slated for happiness. Sadder yet, not one of the secondary characters ever find real happiness either - not Hearst, not Marion Davies, Hearst's mistress, not the butler's wife, not the butlers's mistress, etc. etc. The writing in this book is quite astonishing. There are phrases that stopped me in my tracks, and encouraged me to read them again and again because they are so well-constructed. Not only that, though, the writing mirrors emotion in ways that I cannot even describe. The author wrote this book in English, his second language, which is the reason I find his talent so astonishing. To write like this, he must be able to think in English and well as in Icelandic. This is well worth reading, but is not a cheery or an easy read. I would recommend it to anybody who enjoys good literary fiction.
—Judy
