Olaf Olafsson doesn't have to write books. At 42, he is the CEO of
Time Warner Digital Media and the founder of Sony Interactive
Entertainment; he lives in a triplex in Manhattan and owns a home
in his native Reykjavik, Iceland. Olafsson, son of prolific and
highly regarded Icelandic writer Olafure Sigurdsson, did not study
literature or writing; instead, he attended Brandeis University on
a Wien Scholarship and studied positron physics. Olafsson is the
embodiment of what so many writers say: that they didn't choose
writing, writing chose them.

From his novels (which include ABSOLUTION and THE JOURNEY HOME), it
seems that Olafsson also doesn't choose his stories; they choose
him. What could be further from Olafsson's privileged existence
than the character of Disa in THE JOURNEY HOME, an Icelandic woman
who has lived for years in England and must travel back to her
native land to resolve a personal riddle? And yet Olafsson, too, is
a willing exile, which perhaps explains part of the pull of the
story behind his latest novel, WALKING INTO THE NIGHT.

Christian Benediktsson is William Randolph Hearst's butler at San
Simeon, the media mogul's vast California seaside estate. The
Icelandic native is a controlled, controlling staff member whose
sole pleasure seems to be sketching wild birds in his rare free
hours. He caters to his employer's every whim. But when one of
Hearst's fixations threatens Benediktsson's position, the butler
finds himself increasingly obsessed with his own shadowy
past.

As the novel opens, Benediktsson has related --- candidly, we
presume --- the history of his marriage to wife Elisabet and the
story of their family back in Iceland. However, as Hearst's life
and empire begin to fray around the edges, Benediktsson's own
frayed memories surface --- his affair in New York with Klara, a
Swedish dancer; his abandonment of Elisabet and their children; and
his many errors in judgment that lead him to become a butler.

Benediktsson's voice is as flat and toneless as one would expect
from a man who has severed all ties with his past. Interestingly
enough, this character is based on a real person who did in fact
abandon his family and work as a butler, although probably not for
Hearst. That man's grandson confirms his grandfather's stolid
demeanor: "We called him 'Sitting Bull,'" he says. In real life, as
in the novel, this man is "outed" by an act of heroism --- he wound
up back with his family not because he wanted to be found, but
because he was found by a fluke. (Of course, one could argue that
his heroism was subconsciously motivated by a wish to be found. .
.)

While the voice has authenticity, it lacks the force of Disa's. The
reader is left to wonder whether the flatness is the point (if a
man chooses to throw away his family, is he an empty shell?), or if
Olafsson simply found it too difficult to sustain the story of a
man who doesn't want to tell it in the first place.