This book is a wonderful intersection of old mystical legends and slowly creeping modernization. On one hand there is a discussion about getting electricity into the village and on the other, there is a pastor who is obsessively hunting for the legendary and possibly magical blue fox. With shifting perspective between the idyllic Icelandic village life and the hunt, Sjon juxtaposes magical realism and reality in a striking fashion. 
 The snow, sun and the Scandinavian landscape plays host to funeral of a mentally handicapped woman and man who loses his humanity as he comes closer to his hunt. The story can be bleak, vile, disturbing, heart breaking, depressing and magical; all the same time. Both, the blue fox and the woman suffer same consequence, when men with misguided set of principles are goaded by moral righteousness perform horrific actions because they can. The pastor is so consumed by the hunt that he doesn't mind the cold or the bitter wind when he strips naked and soaks up the sun. In the stillness of the forest and the landscape, he becomes on. Its a transcending moment for him in his hunt for the blue fox that takes him deeper into the psyche of a predator losing some of his humanity. 
 The transcending moments don't exist when a man abuses a woman. He simply covers it with practiced apathy and righteousness. All the pretense of civic duty and moral compass manage to remain intact as their actions are condoned eventually. The story is entirely heartbreaking, for the young woman's plight and the subsequent actions it follows. 
 In a little over hundred pages Sjon packs in several story threads, each thread interwoven with familiarity of folktales and the surrealism that carries through it all. Simplistically, he says we lose humanity when we resolve to violence and hunt for the sake of killing. 
 Beautifully written and stupendously grounding.