This limpid novel, which won for its Icelandic author his country's 1991 Literary Prize, tells in a lyrical style replete with sensuous descriptive passages and quirky metaphors the story of a nine-year-old girl punished for shoplifting by incarceration on a rustic "work farm." In fact, her new home is a kind of unpretentious fairyland where human dwellers (her lenient employers, their pregnant daughter, a convivial farmhand) and animal presences (horses, a lamb, and the enigmatic title creature) alike imbue her with a resilience capable of enduring the "vast hopelessness" that afflicts her homeland. A winning combination of subtle psychological study, beast fable, and prose poem rendered into graceful, haunting English prose. (Kirkus Reviews)