wildcat

I finished Icelander this morning. It's a fun book, twisting around on itself, enjoying its postmodern mud romps. The idea isn't particularly new - the novel is a mystery novel written by an unknown author and then landed in the hands of the mysterious editor, who footnotes everything and then writes an afterword about the book, suggesting certain solutions to the mysteries carried within, pointing out the notable absences in the text. It's smart, it's crisply written, the footnotes and metatextual stuff plays well into the story. The author, Dustin Long, does a good job of playing with old archetypes like the mastermind criminal (this time, called Surt) and the idea of an underground civilization beneath Iceland is enticing - underground kingdoms, hidden cities, are good fodder. He occasionally loses it with the character names, because even though I absolutely love strange character names and got a lot out of most of his cast, Constance Lingus stood out as pushing the boundary a little too much (A reporter named Connie Lingus....sigh).

The plan for the afternoon is working on the hotel detective story, though I'm going to duck out and buy some dinner groceries first. I've up to about sixteen pages of the first draft, getting closer to the mystery's solution, and I'm certainly looking at how I can make the story a lot more coherent. It's going well, though.