“My life was like playing mikado, fishing out one stick after another without ever letting the pile collapse.”

A ten-year-old girl narrates the year that cracks her family quietly open. In 1980s Reykjavík, her mother won’t leave the bedroom, her father offers no warmth, and her brother’s cruelty is something she’s learned to absorb in silence, because keeping the peace means staying small. Told entirely through the girl’s eyes, Mikado asks the reader to do what she does every day: read between the lines of a household built on appearances.

Away from home she finds friendship, glimpses of tenderness between other siblings, and examples of normal family life. At home, the violence surfaces at last, and so does her mother’s voice. It is written with a sly, deadpan wit that sits right alongside the family’s quiet violence, in a world that is by turns suffocating and full of possibility.

A quiet, exacting portrait of a girl teaching herself to take up space, and the family that taught her not to. By the end, little has changed on the surface, yet the girl herself has taken real steps toward independence and safety.

“The first-person perspective creates great intimacy; we see the world through her eyes. Warning bells quickly begin to ring for readers, even if the protagonist doesn’t necessarily hear them. She uses her diary as a tool to piece her world back together so it can be entirely on her own terms. …  I strongly recommend the book for those who want to read a strong, accessible story about domestic violence and inner resilience, and for anyone interested in contemporary literature where the mind of a child is taken seriously.”
AMF, MORGUNBLADID DAILY

“Gerður Kristný is among our very best authors, and this new story is tremendously well-written and structured. It is exciting, driven forward by the reader’s care for the main character, and the language is exceptionally colorful and vivid. Gerður has a special talent for stepping into the inner world of children, and all the metaphors and imagery she draws up are both original and so in tune with what a child of those years might think that at times you can hardly help but gasp in admiration. I am so glad that it’s possible to create such strong stories and handle our language so well. Mikado has joined the stack of books I always keep within reach and read again and again.”
SS, LIFDUNUNA.IS

“The darling poet of the Icelandic nation … the most popular poet of her generation …”
FRETTABLADID DAILY