{"id":290496,"date":"2012-05-21T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2012\/05\/21\/latest-review-the-hitmans-guide-to-housecleaning-by-hallgrimur-helgason\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:51","slug":"latest-review-the-hitmans-guide-to-housecleaning-by-hallgrimur-helgason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2012\/05\/21\/latest-review-the-hitmans-guide-to-housecleaning-by-hallgrimur-helgason\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning" by Hallgr\u00edmur Helgason"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest addition<\/a> to our Reviews Section<\/a> is a piece by Larissa Kyzer<\/a> on Hallgr\u00edmur Helgason’s The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning<\/em>, which AmazonCrossing brought out this past January. <\/p>\n

It may be due to my Icelandic Crush,<\/a> but of all the books AmazonCrossing has brought out so far, this is the one that most excites me. Here are a few really choice passages from Larissa’s review that back up my interest:<\/p>\n

\n

While The Hitman\u2019s Guide<\/em> has much to recommend it in terms of plotting, pacing, and characterization, it is particularly interesting on a more “meta” level as well. For one, since Toxic arrives in Iceland with little to no previous knowledge of the country and culture, the book acts as something of a crash course in Icelandic society and idiosyncrasies. Sometimes, his observations about Iceland are more factual: he learns that it was originally christened by Irish monks, that Iceland has no prostitutes, and that \u201cthe beer costs a bear.\u201d In other cases, the observations are a little more (self-)mocking (\u201cAccording to Icelandic house rules, you\u2019re allowed to enter in your shoes if they cost more than two hundred dollars\u201d), and a bit opaque for someone unfamiliar with say, Iceland\u2019s satirical contestant in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.<\/a> But however these cultural snippets are conveyed, upon finishing the novel, the reader comes away with a fairly strong, if somewhat slanted, sense of Reykjav\u00edk and Icelandic culture. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Another interesting feature is the author\u2019s use of language. Hallgr\u00edmur originally wrote The Hitman\u2019s Guide to Housecleaning<\/em> in English rather than Icelandic, and has an almost playful approach to rhyme and description throughout the novel. Toxic refers to a contender for his girlfriend\u2019s affections, an Italian mafioso, as \u201cthe Talian Mobthrob.\u201d In another passage, he describes the late-setting sun: \u201cAt 10:33 the sun is still burning on the horizon like an orange lantern at an outdoor Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn.\u201d The descriptions don\u2019t always hit their mark\u2014there are a few too many laboriously detailed passages about female anatomy, and sometimes the imagery borders on overwrought (\u201cThe Balkan animal, which is my soul, is always hungry for prey\u201d), but overall, the prose and dialogue is fresh and expansive. There are also a host of phonetic jokes about Icelandic words and names that Toxic mishears and then renders into stilted English, making countless puns on street names around the capitol; Icelandic phrases are renamed into things like \u201cGuard the Beer,\u201d and Reykjav\u00edk\u2019s famous Kaffibarinn becomes \u201cCaf\u00e9 Bahrain.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read the entire review by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is a piece by Larissa Kyzer on Hallgr\u00edmur Helgason’s The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, which AmazonCrossing brought out this past January. It may be due to my Icelandic Crush, but of all the books AmazonCrossing has brought out so far, this is the one that most excites me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[43376,27486,47036,6046,14766,1646],"class_list":["post-290496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-amazon-crossing","tag-hallgrimur-helgason","tag-hitmans-guide-to-housecleaning","tag-icelandic-literature","tag-larissa-kyzer","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311386,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290496\/revisions\/311386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}