Beautifully written, certain surreal parts read like poetry in a way. The narrative is so dream-like that it enhances the impact of the last few paragraphs immensely. I reckon I'll remember Máni Steinn, and Bósi, for a long time even if I never re-read the book. ( )

I bought this last year in the gay bookshop in London, "Gay's the Word" - a nice and friendly little place specializing in LGBT literature. It took me a bit long to actually get around to reading it, I think - it turned out to be very short, and typeset quite large. It's an interesting look at Iceland on the eve of independence in 1918, ravaged by the Spanish Flu, through the eyes of a teenage hustler.

Good, a bit weird at times, and a heartwarming story. I'd recommend it. ( )

That was weird and I liked it. ( )

"Had we but another world and time
Our passionate embraces were no crime.”

This book felt like a fever dream. A hazy, wonderful, surreal, fever dream.

Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was tells the story of 16-year-old Máni Steinn ("Moon Stone" in Icelandic), a working-class male prostitute in 1918 Reykjavík, Iceland. As the town is submerged into the plague of the Spanish Flu, Máni finds solace in something finally akin to what he feels—the picture shows, and a hellish stopping of his city. Housed by his great-grandmother's sister and enamored with the girl Sola G—. Máni's many male relations dot this hazy story of concealment, darkness, and surreality.

A central theme in this novel is of the objectification of Máni—so similar to the characters in the films he attends religiously and strengthening the idea that he "never was". As a doctor accuses the cinema of the fetishization of people, Máni is subjected to that humiliation in his trade, securing his money to go back to the movies in an uncomfortable cycle—mirroring another theme of the cycles of life. The objectification ebbs and flows to Máni's concious—in one phantasmagorial scene a man takes Máni's head from behind a painting to sleep with—the boy's headless body watching from the foot of the bed as he is metaphorically picked apart for consumption and pleasure. An uncomfortable reality is explored: people take only what they want from other people. As Sola G— saves Máni as he is transformed (beaten and boiled) into clothing, even the God-like girl is not immune to "sheathing" his nails and wiping his mustache away.

This Sola G— is freedom. She's a promise of freedom: from Reykjavik and from loneliness and even from his sexuality. The description of her sultry perfumes and form conjure a Máni wanting a woman, and just as people only take what they want from others, perhaps people only take what they can. Her sullen reds inspire the only other color than black in the novel, and the gifting of her red scarf ties the two together in more than one way. "Moonstones" are gems often associated with women; the ties to the cycles of the moon and the feminine are common threads in its understanding. Máni is a shining white gem in the body of a boy, tied to the phases and insanity of the moon, at odds with his sexual soul. Sola, a name meaning both sun and “to help, save, and rescue” in old Norse, is the shining goddess he wishes he could be, the metaphorical brightness and escape of everything her presence promises.

The theme of the cycles of life and of aging course the novel as well, with one of the most poignant scenes depicting Máni in bed with a man who can speak English. It is stark; the boy cannot even read in his own language, and yet the man, in the soft poetics of affection (undermined but not even giving Máni name) leaves this poem:

Spring turns to Autumn over night
In Flanders Field,
Before its time the corn is cut,
Your auburn hair,
A harvest meal by ravens pluck'd

Máni is only in youth for seasons, his body and auburn hair a meal for raven men until he is out of season. He is systematically harvested and at the mercy of time, and just as Máni witnesses his caretaker lose 60 years and melt into a young woman, the passage of time is uncomfortable and painfully physical, surreal as we ourselves become victims to it.

And so unsurprisingly, this novel is dark—both in subject manner and color. Streaked with blacks with touches of red, the lips of Sola, her scarf that is given to Máni, the bloodied beaches and frothing waves as the boy, in one scene, is confronting illness. Yellow flashes in the noir novel; tansy flowers surround Máni as he is semi-conscious on that beach, conjuring an idyllic image negated by the toxicity of the flowers. Blue drifts in plumes of cigarette smoke of the men and women in town is alluring and ultimately fatal. Pink is only watered down blood. None of the hints of color can evade the darkness of this novel, and black butterflies, velvet ribbons, wings inside a chest and turbans pervade. Even blood and his red hair are "dark". A solitary "light" blue novel with poppies on the front is none other than a copy of an early gay novel Mikaël—a touch of light amidst the oppressive dark (that Máni can't help but succumb to, for comfort or routine, I do not know)—left as even it's owner (a man Máni describes as the kindest he had known) perishes from the flu, disparate and unnatural to the darkness of Reykjavik.

In a way the boy "never was" for many reasons. A history born of leprosy, his sexuality a metaphor for the concealment he had to live under, and the new life and name he takes wiping the slate of his life clean—beyond the obvious third-wall slap that this is fiction. It's uncomfortable to think our lives will be so mutable and forgotten, the boy is even denied a name in the end to link him to anyone but himself. And yet it happens and will continue to. All that is certain is what we experience.

I want to reread this and formulate my thoughts on this for years. This book was gorgeous. It was a dream. As much as the novel suffers for not being grounded enough, so much of the books beauty lies in that un-groudedness. It's a feeling—it's characters and images and colors that are vehicles of human emotion, a Freudian look at sexuality and being in a concealed, hostile past. It's also a poem, a piece of prose poetry I can relook at a million times and find some new truth about living. I recommend this book a thousand times over, though I can't promise anything other than a melancholic, separate feeling being left with you—much like Máni must have felt. ( )

Set early in 1918 in Reykajavik, Moonstone tells the story of sixteen year old Mani Steinn, who seems pretty much on his own, although most nights he returns to sleep in the house of “the old lady” (he also does some chores for her ). Mani is a homosexual and obsessed with the cinema; he often has sex for money so he has the resources to go to the cinema often.

But, there are vestiges of WWI still, and the Katla volcano seems about to erupt at any moment, and the Spanish flu has rolled into town… Against all of this uncertainty, the cinema is shut down and Mani follows a female friend and becomes an assistant for the overwhelmed local doctor.

If you can get through the first two pages (Mani is 'servicing' a man), this is a fascinating coming-of-age story for a boy who seems to not belong to anyone or have any sense of direction. ( )