Walking into the Night

The New York Times

… quietly moving … an evocative tale of grief and hope. —Samina Ali

The Washington Post

The author, an Icelandic business executive based in New York, operates in a quaintly sensitive register, weaving a story about loyalty and betrayal that is sometimes poignant and never cynical. — Philip Landon

Library Journal

Olafsson (The Journey Home) crafts the story of Christian Benediktsson, butler to William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon in the late 1930s. As he oversees the estate, waiting on Hearst and organizing parties for movie stars and politicians, Christian remains haunted by images of his earlier life. He was married and had a family in his native Iceland over 20 years ago and had taken over his wife's family business with much success. A strange and independent man who had lied to his wife about his background when they met, Christian later became involved with a woman in New York City during a business trip. The tragic story of this affair and its effect on his marriage and life are gradually divulged to the reader, even as life at San Simeon changes, with Hearst's financial affairs in disarray and "the Chief" himself involved with a younger, unstable actress. There are similarities to Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, but Olafsson works within an environment of potent natural forces, drawing on the mythic power of the sea, trees, birds, and violent storms in a subtle but seductive prose style. Recommended for all collections.-Jim Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Icelandic-born Olafsson (The Journey Home, 2000; Absolution, 1994) tells the life story of William Randolph Hearst’s fictional butler—deftly and grippingly. Even when they’re married around 1910, in Iceland, something is amiss between handsome Kristjan Benediktsson and his lovely bride, Elisabet: Kristjan, the son of a simple fisherman, feels outranked by Elisabet, who performs Mozart on the piano and whose successful father, in import-export, is locally prominent. Still, an effort is made, the couple has four children, and, when Elisabet’s father dies, Kristjan takes over the business (and rescues it, in fact, from the fiscal abyss). But Kristjan likes his business trips to New York only too well (WWI has closed Europe’s markets to him) and likes them even better after he meets the beautiful Klara, Swedish, a dancer, the fiancée of a New York business associate, and—when he falls in love with her—the beginning of a terrible darkness for Kristjan. In 1918, he returns to Reykjavik, intending to stick by his family for keeps—until a letter from Klara , saying she’s pregnant. Without even a goodbye, Kristjan steals away, books ship, reunites with Klara—and later holds her in his arms as she dies following an abortion. And so it is that Kristjan, desolate, fallen so low as to be waiting tables at the Waldorf, catches the eye of Hearst, who so likes the handsome Icelander that he makes him his individual servant whenever he’s at the Waldorf—and then, in 1921, takes him out to San Simeon, where he’ll stay for the next 16 years, trusted and impeccable butler in the great palace that entertains celebrities galore and houses Hearst’s lovely mistress, Marion Davies.And then? Well, it’s now 1937, the Hearst fortune isn’t what it was, and . . . but let the reader find out. Clear-eyed and captivating, Olafsson writes effortlessly, seemingly incapable of a dull paragraph or page. His people are real, period atmosphere and detail unobtrusively perfect, his novel a gem and small masterpiece.