In the quiet and meditative latest from Ólafsdóttir (Miss Iceland), a midwife reflects on life and death. Dómhildur is the fourth in a maternal line of midwives, while her paternal ancestors have been undertakers. As Christmas approaches and the long Icelandic winter rages, she spends time in the apartment she has inherited from her namesake great-aunt, going through the late Dómhildur's letters and other writings on the nature of the humanity, offering accounts of people at their weakest, most joyous, and most devastated. Meanwhile, Dómhildur's meteorologist sister warns her about an unprecedented storm that's on the way, and a hapless Australian tourist renting an upstairs neighbor's apartment plies Dómhildur with questions about the weather and where he should go. Ólafsdóttir is at her best when sharing the histories of midwives--in Icelandic, the word is made up of the words for "mother" and light"--who traverse a landscape of "bottomless eternal blackness" in attempts to perform their work, often arriving to find a newborn dead, "because the weather doesn't always bend to the requirements of a woman in need." Nothing much happens, but only in the way that one could say nothing much happens on any given day, the rhythms of which the author captures perfectly. The result is a rich slice of life. (Dec.)

Prize-winning Icelandic author Ólafsdóttir's lyrical meditation on birth and death centers on Dýja, who was named for her grandaunt, nicknamed Fífa. Like many generations of women in her family, including her namesake, Dýja is a midwife, the Icelandic word for which--ljósmóður--translates to "mother of light." After Fífa's death, Dýja inherits her apartment and a box containing three of Fifa's manuscripts: Animal Life, The Truth about Light, and Coincidence. The novel alternates between Dýja's attempts to understand her grandaunt's work and her day-to-day life during the darkest time of the year as she and the members of her community prepare for a major storm. As women who bring life into the world, Dýja and her grandaunt both consider the impact of humanity on the natural world and birth in the face of the inevitability of death. At times poetic and philosophical, Animal Life is a uniquely crafted novel that concerns itself with light and darkness, purpose and coincidence, fear and hope.

Ólafsdóttir follows up her award-winning Miss Iceland with the story of Dómhildur, named in her family's tradition after an unmarried midwife among her relatives, in this case a grandaunt whose apartment she inherits as an adult. Dómhildur, herself a midwife who is both unmarried and childless, has delivered nearly 2,000 babies, and the ghost of her grandaunt continues to haunt her; hospital colleagues continually recount her grandaunt's many witticisms and describe the cakes she brought in for new mothers. It's Christmastime, and Dómhildur meteorologist sister has just predicted a major storm, so Dómhildur remains at home sorting through her grandaunt's many papers. Before her death, her grandaunt had asked her to "stitch her work together" with the aim of understanding humankind, coincidence, and connectedness, as well as light (birth) and darkness (death). The word midwife means mother of light in Icelandic, and as the descendant of midwives on her mother's side and of funeral directors on her father's, Dómhildur finds herself caught between light and dark while reflecting deeply on her aunt's work as the snows arrive. VERDICT Covering a great deal of philosophical ground while at times very funny, this Icelandic treat is highly recommended.--Jacqueline Snider

An Icelandic midwife, from a long line of midwives, tries to decipher the meaning of the unpublished manuscripts her beloved great-aunt and mentor left in her care before dying. The week before Christmas, Iceland braces for a storm of frightening proportions. Alone in the apartment she inherited from grandaunt Fífa, Dýja takes phone calls from her meteorologist sister about the increasingly extreme weather caused by climate change, strikes up a limited but potentially flirtatious relationship with an Australian tourist renting the apartment upstairs, and fixes up Fífa's run-down flat with the help of a younger midwife. But rudimentary plot aside, the real focus of the book is on Dýja's ruminations about her own and Fífa's belief systems about life and death. Tellingly, Dýja, who gave up theology for midwifery, reveals that midwife means "mother of light" in Icelandic, and it's considered "the most beautiful word in our language"; in rather obvious contrast, her parents run a funeral home. Childless women devoted to delivering other women's babies, Dýja and Fífa see themselves and the world around them with concrete, spare objectivity that readers may find either refreshing or off-putting. Emotions are not discussed and only rarely acknowledged. Instead, this slim novel packs in a lot of factual information, from the sex life of bonobos to the worldwide death rate of women in childbirth--830 a day! Midwifery is the subject but also the metaphor, as is Iceland itself, a nation where people value light since it's in short supply. Dýja struggles to decide if Fífa's three manuscripts, shared in snippets, are drafts covering a main theme from different angles or separate entities. Certainly, Fífa seems ahead of her time as she rails against man's effect on Earth's survival in the 20th century. Although sexual relationships are mentioned, how they fit into each woman's life remains mysterious. Both women emphasize the noun man throughout, and it is pointedly vague whether Fífa includes women when she voices her belief that man is inferior to other animals. Like her characters, Ólafsdóttir's novel is emotionally chilly while intellectually passionate. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.