The Demon Lover

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

One reaches the final story in this collection to read what is arguably
the key sentence. In “The Wizard of the Westman,” Arnason writes,
“[t]hey were full of stories and they told them to each other through
the days and nights.” The 17 stories presented here are a blending of
Icelandic saga with modern fable; a marriage, if you like, of La
Fontaine and Beowulf with Mark Twain and Steven Leacock. Several of the
stories are set in Iceland (Arnason appears well-versed in the folklore
of that small northern country). In “There Were Giants, Then,”
Johann Peturson, progeny of Icelandic giants and no midget himself,
tackles the courtship of Dorothea Soffia Abrahamsdottir by climbing a
sheer cliff and defeating eight of her protectors. Off to America the
couple goes: “[T]he St. Lawrence River swelled and America opened its
arms and prepared to receive them.”

The stories not set in Iceland are, for the most part, set in Winnipeg,
from where the author hails and where he teaches English at the
University of Manitoba. Never mind that Winnipeg often looks and feels
like Iceland. Arnason’s Winnipeggers and his Icelanders share certain
larger-than-human qualities: size, magic, appetite. So, in “The
Mayor,” each bridge in Winnipeg has a resident troll whom the mayor,
with dire consequences, attempts to dislodge, citing Bylaw 672,
subsection 4a, of the City of Winnipeg Charter. In “The Ogress,” set
in Selkirk, Manitoba (“not exactly a far-off country,” the author
deadpans), young Brittany discovers her ogress-roots and accepts them
with more than good grace.

The Demon Lover offers lots of stories that are fun to read through the
days and nights.