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The Greenhouse, by Audur Ava Olafsdottir
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Young Lobbi was preparing to leave his childhood home, his autistic brother, his octogenarian father, and the familiar landscape of mossy lava fields for an unknown future. Soon before his departure, he received an awful phone call: his mother was in a car accident. She used her dying words to offer calm advice to her son, urging him to continue their shared work in the greenhouse tending to the rare Rosa candida. Prior to his mother’s death, in that very same greenhouse, Lobbi made love to Anna, a friend of a friend, and just as he readies his departure he learns that in their brief night together they conceived a child. He is still reeling from this chain of events when he arrives at his new job, reinstating the rare eight-petaled rose in the majestic forgotten garden of an ancient European monastery. In focusing his energy cultivating the rarest rose, he also learns to cultivate love, with the help of a film buff monk and his newborn daughter, Flora Sol.
- Published on: 2015-09-15
- Formats: Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.75" h x .50" w x 5.25" l,
- Running time: 7 Hours
- Binding: MP3 CD
Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Audur Ava Olafsdottir
Question: Are you a gardener yourself, or are the references to growth and cultivation in The Greenhouse intended as a metaphor for the protagonist’s own growth and self-realization?
Audur Ava Olafsdottir: I would like to be a gardener like my protagonist, Lobbi--"silent in the soil," so to speak. But really, I am just an author using my imagination as a tool. While I was writing The Greenhouse, my own garden in Reykjavik was neglected.
Q: What inspired you to get inside the head of a twentysomething man?
AAO: The novel tells the story of a very young father who is "practically brought up in a greenhouse" and has three main interests in life: sex, death, and cultivating roses. The story focuses on his many complex roles as a son, a twin brother, a lover, and a father. I was particularly interested in fatherhood, which is in many ways an abstract experience--especially when you have a child with a stranger, like Lobbi does--compared to the woman's experience of giving birth. I like to play with traditional gender roles by talking about male sensitivity.
Q: Lobbi tries to move on after his mother's death by taking a journey to restore the gardens of a remote monastery. Is the monastery he visits based on a real place?
AAO: Many people have asked me where the beautiful rose garden in the story is. I answer that the possibility of creating a garden and making it real is always there if you can make it grow in the reader's mind. That's how fiction works. My Lobbi is traveling through an unnamed country. As in all fictional travels, the narrator becomes acquainted with himself, rather than with a place.
Q: Through Lobbi's grief-stricken eyes after the death of his mother, you paint Iceland as barren and desolate place. But how would you describe the country yourself?
AAO: The natural landscape is breathtaking. It is like being lost in space or in infinity, and it gives you the feeling of total freedom. Being an Icelander also means being part of a small community of 317,000 people and being constantly confronted with the unpredictable: weather, volcanic eruptions, bankruptcy. Being an Icelandic writer means expressing myself in a marginal language that no one understands.
Q: You have a degree in art history and also work as a curator. How did you get into writing? Does your eye for art give you a different perspective?
AAO: I think the main impact of working full-time as an art historian is that there's a longer gap between books. But thousands of pictures have gone through my mind, and they probably have some influence on my writing. There's often a picture in my mind as a starting point, but while I'm writing, it disappears beneath layers of text.
My view of the world has always been slightly skewed. Then, out of nowhere, I had this urge to create fictitious worlds with their own laws. Maybe it comes from a strong need for freedom. Like many writers, I want the world to be different, and writing novels is my small contribution to that.
Q: Lobbi and Anna's daughter is an angelic creature--easy to care for and a positive influence on others. But you’re a mother, and you know that child rearing can be far from easy. Why did you portray the baby that way?
AAO: Is not any child a miracle and fatherhood a wonderful opportunity?
From Booklist
Following the death of his mother, whose beloved greenhouse was home to rare roses, 22-year-old Lobbi leaves his elderly father and autistic twin brother behind in his native Iceland to take a job restoring a medieval rose garden at a European monastery. He is also leaving behind Flora Sol, his infant daughter, the result of a meaningless one-night-stand with Anna, a young woman determined to pursue her university degree in spite of her single motherhood. Arriving at the monastery after a tempestuous journey that involves unexpected surgery and an otherworldly drive through mystical forests, Lobbi adjusts to his new life, where he engages in self-contemplation with the help of a monk who is most comfortable giving advice through the viewing of movies. When Anna and Flora Sol suddenly appear, Lobbi is finally able to appreciate what it means to be a father and son, friend and tender of souls, both human and floral. Buoyed by FitzGibbon’s luminous translation, Olafsdottir’s internationally award-winning tale is a melancholy yet moving portrait of a young man struggling to make sense of unconventional relationships and responsibilities. — Carol Haggas
Review
2011 Winner of the Quebec Booksellers’ Prize (Canada)
2010 Winner of the Prix de Page for Best European Novel of the Year (France)
2007 Winner of the DV Culture Award (Iceland)
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina (France)
"One of the most unexpected and greatest discoveries of the year." —Le Parisien
"Excellent introduction to Icelandic fiction; funny." —The New York Times
“The Greenhouse is a rare book, full of beauty. After opening the book I was unable to put it down, entirely captivated by its enchanting style.” – Le Page
“A revelation.”—Le Monde
“[An] entertaining read.”—The Complete Review
"At once wryly observant and sweetly comic, The Greenhouse is a meditation on such sweeping themes as sex, death, becoming a parent, manhood, and finding a place for oneself in the world which doesn’t once fall prey to cloying generalizations or cliche. Rather, through the eyes of twenty-two year old Arnlj�tur Th�rir—or Lobbi, as his elderly father affectionately calls him—author Audur Ava Olafsdottir breathes a freshness and sincerity into her subject matter which is as charming as it is insightful." —Three Percent
Most helpful customer reviews
81 of 85 people found the following review helpful.
A Book with a Golden Glow
By Pilgrim
This book is the tale of an immature young Icelandic man who goes on a journey of more than a thousand miles to southern Europe to restore the rose garden of an ancient monastery. It is a glowing book, the story of a pilgrimage, the story of how this innocently selfish young man becomes a father in more than the biological sense of the word. It is a beautiful book, a rare gem. Its descriptions of Icelandic life and scenery are unusual and fascinating, with the single flower struggling to bloom on the lava flow, and his conversations with the eccentric film-loving monk, and our hero's attempts at cooking, are amusing. On the surface it is a simple tale, but look deeper: there is a lot of Christian imagery. Don't take it at face value, think. The Rosa Candida, the eight petalled true rose, is surely a metaphor for the Virgin Mary, and is the rose garden a metaphor for the Garden of Eden? It is easy to read, and a real page-turner, but don't just rush through it and go on to something else. This book deserves thought and discussion. It is a deeply affecting work of pure brilliance, and I thoroughly recommend it. Read it.
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
A Glowing Gift from Iceland
By Tom Killalea
Now that it's finally available in English, beautifully translated by Brian FitzGibbon, I got the chance to read The Greenhouse. It's a truly remarkable novel, and its widespread acclaim as the 2010 book of the year was well-deserved.
On the surface it is a first-person narrative that tells the coming of age story of Arnlj�tur (or "Lobbi"), a 22 year old from Iceland who goes on a journey to find himself. He is a thoughtful boy who studies in the family greenhouse "to be able to read close to the plants" and who thinks about what it might mean to "spend one's entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow".
His journey takes him from Iceland, which he sees as dominated by moss, tussocks and swamps, to a cliff-top monastery in an intentionally unnamed country that provides a stark contrast to his homeland. We hear him think through his bodily longings, what it means to be a man, fatherhood, faith, death, and our connections with the planet and the plants around us. And beneath all of this there is the question of how we relate to people, and how those relationships make us whole. There is the ever-present memory of Arnlj�tur's mother and the unforgettable final conversation that he had with her, as well as his evolving closeness to his daughter, Fl�ra S�l.
Olafsdottir makes liberal use of symbolism, and most significantly there is the precious Rosa Candida, the violet-red, thorn-less, eight-petaled rose.
Richness also comes from Olafsdottir's beautifully drawn minor characters. She captures monastic life wonderfully; in the absence of sustained contact with a broader community the small details of daily routines and of relationships mean so much to the monks. The villagers also are simple yet colorful. And there is Arnlj�tur's father, about whom you learn a lot from this one line: "When he's finished asking me about the weather and the traffic conditions on the roads, he tells me that seven depressions have crossed the country in about as many days."
Finally, there is Father Thomas. If you're a fan of Indie and Art House films then you might enjoy this list of mentioned movies:
1. Cesar & Rosalie
2. Nostalghia
3. Trois Couleurs: Bleu
4. The Seventh Seal
5. Eat Drink Man Woman
6. Chocolat
7. Babette's Feast
8. Like Water For Chocolate
9. Chungking Express
10. In the Mood for Love
11. Je vous salue (Hail Mary)
He Also mentions Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard.
His recommendations range from the bizarre (the movie with Yves Montana and Romy Schneider is C�sar & Rosalie) to the more expected (Trois Couleurs: Bleu, in which the heroine, like Arnlj�tur, witnesses a horrific car accident, obsesses about death, and goes on a journey of self-discovery).
Arnlj�tur emerges as an everyman with whom we can identify, and I hope that we will see more from Audur Ava Olafsdottir.
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Touching and beautifully written
By Live2Cruise
What a wonderful introduction to this author! Narrated by "Lobbi" as he is affectionately called by his father, this is the story of a young man's search for himself and for meaning in life. After a tragic loss, Lobbi becomes fixated on the body and on death. He follows his passion for gardening to tend to a famous, but now neglected and overrun, rose garden at an unnamed monastery somewhere in Europe. Lobbi leaves behind, in Iceland, his infant daughter Flora Sol, the product of a one-night stand. When the mother of his child brings her to him, he is suddenly faced with the life-changing consequences of his one night of carelessness, and must discover what it means to become a father.
The translation of the novel is very well done. The writing is luminous and captivating and several themes are explored: the meaning of life, death, coincidence vs. fate. There is rich symbolism. This is a novel that one can get lost in; it is not terribly plot focused and it's really more about the journey than the destination. Reading it was sort of like taking a train ride through beautiful country-- with each page you could just savor the moment and the lovely writing. Lobbi's character is quite compelling, human and believable. As another reviewer noted, the story is somewhat slow at first, but as his character develops and deepens, you'll be rewarded for sticking with the story. The growing bond of this reluctant young father with his child is tenderly portrayed. This was a thoughtful and touching story well-deserving of the praise it has received.
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