Mystery set mainly in ARGENTINA
Coming-of-age novel set in BORGARNES (Iceland)
6th May 2025
Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller, coming-of-age novel set in BORGARNES, Iceland.
Red Dog Farm tells a year in the life of just-turning-twenty Orri, at uni in Reykjavik when his mother asks him to come home, if he can, to help his dad, who she thinks is having something of a breakdown. He goes home early for the holidays and ends up staying at the farm, to finish that term’s studies remotely.
The book, by an author from Vermont, walks us through the trials and tribulations (and there are many, it’s easy to see why Orri’s father has begun to see it as a thankless task) of a year in cattle farming in Borgarnes, Iceland, in the shadow of the looming mountain Baula, with an incredible sense of place.
Orri is friendly with his neighbour, Rúna, who was bullied at school, she is the daughter of an alcoholic, and the pair enjoy their friendship, allowing people to think of them as a couple to cover her interest in women, for which she recruits the Reykjavik-savvy (she hopes!) Orri to help her meet someone.
During a desultory online search for a date for Rúna, Orri answers a profile for himself, and begins chatting with Mihan, hours of written and then phone conversations, until Orri crosses a line asking for a photo, when contact is cut off for a time, until Mihan’s nephew contacts Orri and they resume their talks and finally arrange to meet and begin their intense relationship.
The key characters, Orri, his parents & grandmother, Rúna, Mihan and of course the dog, Rykug, are all well drawn and their interactions are credible, if at times heartbreaking. The book has, in common with its wonderful predecessor, Stockholm Sven, a bleakness to it, a sort of pall of sadness hanging over it. If it was a colour, my feeling is it would be a grey-blue, the hope, despair, love and frustrations intermingled. Although there are definite highlights during the year, this is no bucolic idyll! But that said, there are also several laugh out loud lines the author skilfully weaves into his tapestry.
Towards the end comes an unexpected upheaval, dynamics changing in a sudden reshuffle, and then again a further seismic shift, which, whilst heartbreaking, does finally resolve some of the agonising issues that have been left dangling in their tatters.
The book finishes on a note of hope, with the naming of the farm, and ends as it starts, with the narrator looking back on all this through the lens of 12yrs hence, which is a comfort, to know that all has obviously gone well enough.
The book is also available as an audio book, narrated beautifully in the dulcet, gravelly tones of Icelandic actor Olafur Darri Ólafsson, lending it a further Icelandic authenticity.
Although the book can hardly be described as action packed, or adrenaline fuelled, being as it is a gentler, almost diary like saga of the events of that year, that is not to say that it isn’t full of emotion, and the action that unfolds is incredibly well written and engaging, and the reader is fully drawn in to and invested in the ups and downs with Orri and those around him.
5/5 for its engaging rustic content, and all-encompassing sense of place. With this second book Miller confirms his place as an automatic must-read for me!
Lee-Anne for the TripFiction Team
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