The Details by Ia Genberg

The details by IA Genberg

Swedish fiction

Original title -Detailjerna

Translator – Kira Josefsson

Source – personnel copy

Now I wasn’t aware of much of this book. But I wasn’t shocked when I saw it on the longlist as it is one of those books I had seen on Instagram and mentioned in a few year-end lists. I felt from its cover it was maybe a work of contemporary fiction. But when I read the blurb on the booker longlist, it seemed interesting enough: a woman is in bed with a fever and has fever dreams about her life. This may be a work of auto-fiction it is alluded to. Ia Genberg started as a Journalist before publishing her first novel in 2012, and since then, she has written a further novel and a collection of short stories, making this her third novel. It was a big seller in Sweden when it came. This seems to be her first book to be translated to English.

Literature was our favourite game. Johanna and I introduced each other to authors and themes, to eras and regions and singular works, to older books and contemporary books and books of different genres.

We had similar tastes but opinions divergent enough to make our discussions interesting. There were certain things we didn’t agree on (Oates, Bukowski, others that left us both unmoved (Gordimer, fantasy), and some we both loved (Klas Östergren, Eyvind Johnson’s Krilon trilogy, Lessing). I could tell how she felt about a book based on how fast she worked her way through it. If she was reading fast (Kundera, all crime fiction), I knew she was bored and rushing to be done, and if she was going too slow (The TinDrum, all sci-fi), she was equally bored but had to struggle to reach the last page

I loved the discucssion of books and sharing a love of literature something i rarely do in person.

 

Whilst in bed with a fever. She starts looking at a novel she got many years ago from an old girlfriend, which sparks a look into four of her old friends and connections over the years. We have a subtle book; the writer calls it a quiet novel. It is about all those tiny little events in one’s life; the book itself is described by the writer as a quiet novel. It captures those little things from a signature in a book like a Prosutian moment. The book she is reading is New york trilogy by Paul auster another writer that deals well at times with those littloe moments. She remembers how she and Johanna introduced each other to writers (I must admit in a way I was a little jealous of this as Amanda and I rarely talk books and she loves true life books and isn’t a quick reader like me that’s aside ) so yes this is her connection with Joanna as she drifts she is then drawn to three other connections over time the book hasn’t a; linear narrative, and that adds to the sense lof fever dream. But it also felt very personal at times.

Johanna became a person of my past, one of many, and had she not turned into a public figure I’d probably have been more successful in forgetting her. Her memory would have been allowed to fade and only rear its head again during fevers like this one, or during bouts of self-pity and nostalgia; it would have waned and withered until, like a badly restored painting, only a few incoherent fragments remained.Maybe I’d have walked by Fyra Knop and caught a scent linked to a voice. I might have dedicated a little thought to her every time I passed by the coffee shop on Linnégatan, or paused at an article about the laborious making of The Sorrow Gondola after Tomas Tranströmer’s passing. Like most people who’ve been abandoned I held the simple hope of never having to see her again;

I held it there as this little passage remind me of the last lines of Stand by me when the adult Geordie talks how two of his friends became faces in the crowd over time.

I’m on the wall with this. I love her taste in books describing Auster as a writer; he was a writer many years ago. I loved it when I first got really back into reading, which would be about 20 years ago. The New York Trilogy was one of my favourite books. also, I fell in love with the film scripts he made for two films, Smoke and Blue in the Face, which, like this book, deal with those quiet little moments of life caught from a signature or in smoke around a camera and pictures. This is maybe a book aimed at a reader twenty years younger than me. In fact, this is one of my feelings about the longlist as a whole. It is a very Gen Z list book. So this book worked but, in a way, didn’t grab me as I wanted it to. Maybe it needs to be Knausgaard in length for me as a reader if that makes sense?

Winston score – B love bits and others didn’t fully connect with me