A magnificent book that contains all of life between its covers—the indomitable human spirit, an outsized landscape, a richly imagined family and a feisty community of characters, all plunging headlong into battles with nature, class, culture and tradition. Here you'll find burning ambition, contests of wills, laugh-out-loud humor, love, lust, sorrow, alienation, reconciliation, wily politics, and economic triumphs and struggles—with the overarching theme of longing to lead an independent lif... (show more)

A magnificent book that contains all of life between its covers—the indomitable human spirit, an outsized landscape, a richly imagined family and a feisty community of characters, all plunging headlong into battles with nature, class, culture and tradition. Here you'll find burning ambition, contests of wills, laugh-out-loud humor, love, lust, sorrow, alienation, reconciliation, wily politics, and economic triumphs and struggles—with the overarching theme of longing to lead an independent life. And sheep! The book feels timeless, with its Icelandic sagas, magical myths, poems and stories, and intimate rendering of ways of life that have been around for a thousand years. And yet it also feels very contemporary, very much in touch with modern family dysfunction and relevant to the topics of our times. Independent People is a great story, gorgeously written and compulsively readable. One of the best books I have ever read—the kind that you are sorry to see end, the kind you start again as soon as you've finished. Reminds me very much of Kristen Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset, another of my favorite books of all time. (show less)