A memoir of a family's year living in Reykjavik that "captures the
fierce beauty of the Arctic landscape" (Booklist).
Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a
wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an
advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a
whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in Kent,
England.
The resulting adventure was shaped by Iceland's economic collapse, which
halved the value of her salary; by the eruption of the volcano
Eyjafjallajokull; and by a collection of new friends, including a poet
who saw the only bombs fall on Iceland in 1943; a woman who speaks to
elves; and a chef who guided Sarah's family around the intricacies of
Icelandic cuisine.
Moss explored hillsides of boiling mud and volcanic craters and learned
to drive like an Icelander on the unsurfaced roads that link remote
farms and fishing villages in the far north. She watched the northern
lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds, and as the weeks
and months went by, she and her family learned new ways to live. Names
for the Sea is her compelling and very funny account of living in a
country poised on the edge of Europe, where modernization clashes with
living folklore.
"Beautifully written . . . A stranger in a strange land, Moss grapples
with new foods, customs and landscapes that are both oddly familiar and
wildly alien in this absorbing memoir." --Financial Times
