Heart of Man (my translation; original titel Hjarta mannsins), the final part in Jón Kalman Stefánssons trilogy, centers on The Boys attempts to make the crucial choices of youth. Love and the future is at stake, while the people he has com to care about are forced into alliances they had never thought of. Life in the small Icelandic town is changing.

The mood and the tempo carries on from the previous installment, but here I’m used to them, which makes for better reading. Heart of Man is also the most complex of the three, plotwise, something that I find refreshing.

The end is at the same time terrible and terrific. While one part of me states that this is how all stories should end, simply because it is how the do end, another part finds the final scenes a bit contrived and improbable. In my humble opinion the book should have ended a few pages earlier, with much the same result, but with a greater impact.

Highly recommended!