Though much in [The Fish Can Sing] is ironic and ambiguous, in form it is a straightforward account of an orphan boy growing up in an old fisherman's cottage near Reykjavik, early this century. But of course the theme is Iceland itself, its emergence into the international modern world, an extreme and often philistine yet not unimpressive provincialism being teased out of itself year by year. A native son returns—Gardar Holm, apparently a singer who has won world-wide acclaim but who never proves this claim in public in Reykjavik. The town wants to believe it, for Iceland's sake: 'We want to prove to the rest of the world that "the fish can sing just like a bird".' But it is the young hero of the book who has to sing at Holm's funeral, and at the end he leaves Iceland, another Stephen Dedalus. (p. 486)

Edwin Morgan...