Category: Sweden

Supporting Act by Agnes Lidbeck

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Supporting Act by Agnes Lidbeck

Swedish Fiction

Original title –Finna sig

Translator Nichola Smalley

Source – Subscription book

I have long been a fan of the books published by Peirene Press over the years, even though they are now in different hands. The concept of novellas that can be read in the time it takes to watch a film remains the same. Another of their years had miniature epics, and this book would fit in that selection of books. It is a small epic. One Woman’s Life is told over the span of this book. I find it amazing that this was the debut novel; the narrative and arc of the book feel like they are from a far more experienced writer. Agnes Lidbeck had worked for the Swedish Institute while writing this book and has since been a cultural commentator for a Swedish newspaper. Her father is a well-known Swedish director, and her half-sister is an actress.

When a woman becomes a mother, the unit of measurement for her worth shifts from that denoting her power to attract to that denoting her body’s durability.

Motherhood can be likened to the wearing of religiously coded clothing. The flesh becomes anonymous, suited for things other than desire.

The mother must not be an individual who – through the force of her unique proportions, waistline to nail length – can be distinguished from others.

For that reason, she must no longer be called by a name or by some onomatopoeic metaphor. Instead, she must, like all tools, be named for her function.

One of the quotes from what must be old gudies to motherhood!

 

The book follows Anna, whom we meet as she has become a mother, and how her life changes as a result of motherhood, as well as her connection with her husband, Jens. This is a book about what it is to be a mother. Still, it also has a sprinkling of what looks like old guides to being a mother and over the years, the relationship between her and Jens becomes flat, and she is now just the mother of his kids. She and Jens grab moments, but there is a sense it isn’t enough. The kids are growing and in time theystart having there own lives this is when the book sees whether Jens and Anna can spark there marriage back but when in the latter part of the book by chance she meet the writer Ivan she falls fr this older man, but this leads to her having another female role as soon after she gets a divocrce and they get together Ivan and Anna he starts to have dementia and with his kids she becomes a caregiver.

Lying beside the person you know so well and still trying to creep imperceptibly closer: as though rejection would be less painful if it were not spoken out loud.o.

She curves her back but still Jens does not press himself against her. She breathes as though she is sleeping and he soon drifts off. She lies awake, tense so as to be as clear as possible: here are my arse and thighs, there is no belly here, here are my breasts, where a hand might land as if by accident. Jens will not wake; she feels her construction crumble: her arse and thighs suddenly insignificant, her stomach bearing the traces of two children, her breasts too, they are used up and have no further meaning. What gives him the right to respond or not respond as he wants?

What is this mechanism that gives him this right to have other thoughts in his head?

The cracks appear when she wonders what Jens is thinking ?

I loved the arc of this book, it is one woman’s life. It may be, in a way, the female version of Stoner, a life in a book. Anna’s life seems on a course, and always when the light is there for it to get better, it disappears. But it also captures the traditional female role. I laughed at the interchapter quotes from what seemed to be old motherhood books and later about being single and a caregiver. Showed how the female role is viewed. I was also thinking of the before trilogy just as I had watched a video of that selection of film this is like a few glimpses of a life the passion of early mortherhood, then the mother role, then the empoty nest and what happens next and finally what happens when love dies and temption gets in the way. I said it feel like it is a book that is written by a writer that had written a lot if books it flows in Nichola translation, I have loved all the books she has translated in recent years. For me this should be on next years international booked it is high on books that will be on my books of the year. Do you have a favourite book you’d call a small epic?

Caesaria by Hanna Nordenhök

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Caesaria by Hanna Nordenhök

Swedish fiction

Original title – Caesria

Translator – Saskia Vogel

Source – Review copy

I am a little late to this one. I had hoped to get to it earlier as Heloise is a small publisher bringing some exciting books out in translation from around Europe. I was drawn to this as I saw Hanna was a translator from Spanish to Swedish and had done books from Melchor and Zeran. Both of which works I have enjoyed. She also had success with this book, and her follow-up novel Wonderland made a number of the year lists in Sweden. This is maybe the perfect creepy book for winter.It follows what happens when a doctor performs a caesarian. He was an early gynaecologist. But he then keeps the baby for his own.

Maybe it really had been the badger that screamed on those summer nights, maybe the screams had not been Beda’s but the badger’s, but for some reason the animal had stayed silent on the night we took to the woods. And I wonder if any of what followed that winter, the winter during which the one who called himself Master Valdemar arrived at Lilltuna, would have happened had I not discovered my morbid disposition. The disease that had begun in one loca-tion, only to spread, which is when I’d started beating it into submission with tightly wound bandages.

The scream of the badger one night

A babe ripped from her mother’s stomach and whisked off to a remote country estate of Dr Eldh. He is an early gynaecologist who rescues the baby from a mother who later died. He kept the mother’s pelvis after she had died, something he tells Caesaria. The book is told in the years that followed as surrounded by servants, the young girl Caesaria is trapped in this rural doll house like a living doll just for the Doctor to see Caesaria, hence the title of the book and the procedure the Dr had used to bring the Baby into the world. We follow the young girl over the following years trapped in the estate as the only outside influences are the doctor’s visits over the years. Hanna captures the seasons so well, the height of summer and the bitter cold and darkness of the winters in this remote estate, as we see a girl heading to become a woman. What will be her fate at the doctor’s hands? What was his intention in having her there all those years? Will she be okay? Later in the book, another man also appears to be living on the estate. He, a conductor from Copenhagen, is invited to the estate to recover? But when we hear screams in the night as he has his way with one of the maids, we fear for Caesaria. The Dr seems to come less as she gets older as well!

Doctor Eldh had then made several small incisions in the exposed uterus, and jets of blood the length of quill feathers spurted from it.

The anaesthetised woman had then suffered a severe and prolonged contraction of the uterus, and sponges were pressed against the bowels to stem the haemorrhaging: when the contractions subsided, the uterus was cut right through, and the lifeless little creature, covered in birthing custard, who was me, could be plucked out and resuscitated, by means of insufflation and cold compresses.

How she was brouyght intpot he world as he did one of the first caesarian operations on her mother

The book is v told in observations and descriptions of the events with no real dialogue; it is a gothic tale of a girl growing up alone as a living doll for a doctor. Why he does it has never really gone into detail. It says a lot about the uncontrollable nature of Male power at the time, which was late 19th century Sweden in the early years iof Gynaecology and Dr Eldh is sadly a leading surgeon.. The fact he could just tear (Well, do a Caesarian ) the baby that became Caesaria from the dying mother and whisk him off. To live like a sort of child-like Miss Haversham in an estate, I can see Caesaria being like Haversham as the estate rots around her, trapped in the world as she isn’t allowed to leave and see the wider world she is trapped in the confines of the estate. A dark gothic tale of male abuse of a woman and a young girl a stolen choldhood. A girl becomes a living doll, a toy for the Dr to come and play with occasionally. But what happens when the doll becomes a young woman? What happens when his visits stop? How will a girl unaccustomed to the world cope? All this is captured in such detail that you feel the summer heat, rotting leaves, and snow in the winter. A book that is both disturbing for the reader but also thought-provoking. Partly based on actual events at the time, it seems even darker to read. Have you read this or any other books from Heloie Press?

The ways of Paradise by Peter Cornell

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The ways of Paradise by Peter Cornell

Swedish memoir

Original title – Paradisets vägar

Translator – Saskia Vogel

Source – Subscription book

I had some money come and I decided I wanted to get the Fitzcarraldo subscription and paid for the 20-book subscription as I knew that it would have some great books I had heard about this book earlier this year, and out of the new and upcoming books from them it was easily one I knew I would read the second unit hit the floor through the letterbox, something that maybe doesn’t happen as much as it used to for me as a reader. When I heard Peter Cornell had put together the pieces left behind by an unknown academic researcher  who for thirty years, had spent the previous three decades working on something, what was found is her within this book. Fare to say it is no Pessoa or Bolano trunk full;l of papers or a hard drive of many nearly finished novels. This was just a hundred or so pages of writing. But this was 1987, an age before Google thought this was a man connecting the world, and like the knots in Rushkin’s pieces, he talks about tightening knots around his prose, and this is what is left is like an espresso shot a brutal hit of Knowledge and connections. He links those brilliant minds of the last 2000 years here, there, and everywhere!!

  1. Leonardo da Vinci’s and Dürer’s labyrinthine ‘knots’ without beginning or end can be seen as maps of the universe. They are, along with a few late drawings, the kind of hieroglyphs that may have been stimulated by Leonardo’s well-known exercises around the imaginative eye – to lose one’s self in the damp patches on a wall or other fragmentary forms. ‘One gets the impression that the Leonardo] drawings held at Windsor Castle, which symbolically represent the world at once in its birth and its final cataclysm, stem from similar visions.’ See Gustav René Hocke, Die Welt als Labyrinth, 1957; Ananda K.

Coomaraswamy, ‘The Iconography of Dürer’s “Knots” and Leonardo’s “Concatenation”, in Art Quarterly,1944

Knots and labyrinths a a recurring theme in the book

The three pieces in the book run over and interconnect with one another. They all seem to revolve around labyrinths or the complex nature of the world and how one thing can connect to another. The Greek history of the minotaur and labyrinth through Rushkins integrate knot drawing and then ending with the chaos of Jackson Pollock, but the feeling of a connection through how the pieces connect.. Almost like a knight tour of a chess board, the text moves forward but never quite the way you think it will. You can see the mind of those thirty years crossing and reconnecting these pieces like a giant Meccano set of his mind. This just has to be read !!

  1. Various types of fantastical tales, ‘contes fantastiques autour des contes originaires. Jurgis Baltrusaitis, La quête d’ Isis: Essai sur la légende d’un mythe, 1985.
  2. Ibid.
  3. ‘The centre of the world’, the heart of the world’. This concept recurs in all cultures even as their geographic and topographical situations may vary: country, cave, mountain, tower, temple or city. These imagined places arise from fantasies of a holy land, described as follows by René Guénon: ‘This “holy land”, above all others, it is the finest of lands per the meaning of the Sanskrit word Paradesha, which among the Chaldeans took the form of Pardes and Paradise in the Western world; in other words it refers to the “earthly paradise” that constitutes the point of departure in each religious tradition. Here was the or-igin, here was spoken the first, creative Word. See ‘Les gardiens de la Terre sainte’ (1929), in Symboles fondamen-taux de la Science sacrée, 1962.
  4. Possibly in André Breton’s object Souvenir du paradis terrestre from 1953, a rugged rock, 11.5 x 9.5 x 5 cm, its title inscribed into the rock.
  5. ‘Paradise, from Old Persian pairidaeza, meaning ‘en-closed garden,park

The first five little vignettes of info

I am just a huge fan of digersive books of the way some writers let their minds wander and connect the dots a certain way. More accessible, maybe now, in this age with Google, this book predates Google and such; thus, the work that went into it being the way it was must have been years of refining the prose. This is A scholar caught in a Borgesian library where, like Borges, a writer who could never write a novel, his writing is like that espresso shot perfect complex and just enough of a hit. This prose is like this. I imagine a huger work pruned over those thirty years, but as you do that, the mind connects other things, and the whole thing becomes like an Escher painting or a Mobius loop where there is a point that it seems like it is an endless connection with the world and that is what happens here. It is a man caught in an Escher world, a labyrinth of his mind slowly closing as those prose-like knots grow shorter and shorter. Oh my god, I am just off on my own tangent now. Let’s just say this will quickly be the book of the year for me. I can’t see anything coming near it apart from my next read, a similar, if longer, book from Fitzcarraldo by a great German writer. Have you a favourite digressive work of literature ?

The Details by Ia Genberg

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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

Ædnan an Epic by Linnea Axelsson

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Ædnan an Epic by Linea Axelsson

Swedish fiction.

Translated by Saskia Vogel

Source – Review copy

I am on the list of books coming out this year. This was one of the ones that really caught my eye. An epic novel set in Sweden around the Sami community appealed to me as there aren’t enough books in translation from indigenous writers. So I was pleased when pushkin sent me a review copy, Linea Axelsson was born in the north of Sweden around the area, the book is set. She studied art history at university and then moved to Stockholm. This is her debut novel and focuses on the last century in a Sami community following three generations and their struggles in an ever-changing Sweden. This book won the August prize when it came out.

Through the Rosta River Valley from Lake Adjávárddojáurrit. Past the rivers

Tamok and Dapmoteatnu, 1913

(BER-JONÁ)

My brother and I

Aslat

we sang nothing

we no longer sang forth the earth and the memories

–

Vessels of song formed by the voice

When words were not enough for the lives we lived

They had trudged through hate

They had waded in sorrow

The birth of the twins in 1913 a harsh world they are born into

The title of the novel means the land , the ground the Earth. This is an epic verse novel. that felt like you were sitting by a campfire as a family recounting that history over the century. the book is the history of two families over three generations from 1900 until nearly modern day. The book opens with a young couple heading to the winter feeding grounds as they are expecting twin boys. Aslat and Nila, but when Nila, the smaller twin, is found to be too weak to be of use and his brother suffers an injury. add to this the fact they have Norwegians have closed the border, meaning families and couples are separated. And it is a hard life. We meet the twin’s father and when he is a much older man and living in a Swedish city in Projus. The family is now part of the indigenous studies by the Swedish government at the time. At this point, the narrative switches to the other family, neighbours Off. Ristin, and we follow Lise’s story. so we get the next generations to take on being indigenous as their natural  grazing band is being looked at and may be taken over to build a dam and a hydroelectric plant. This is in the 70s. The book just goes on after this, but I will leave you to discover the end of the book.

The little needlecase

made of reindeer horn that she had on her belt that one time

The seaplane made

an emergency landing in the fells and she was there

and had to mend a tear in the wing with sinew thread

You didn’t usually have the needlecase on you Mama

But that time you did

–

You who always said that you were sure I’d marry a Swede

I loved a lot of the little details thrown in like the little needle case here.

Ever since Lisa has done her indigenous reading weeks, it has made me more conscious of writers from indigenous backgrounds. what really grab me to know about this book, I was the style of writing a three verse with no punctuation in short bursts of three lines. Something almost hypnotic times about reading it. Have you really got the feel of an Icelandic epic or those great verse poems? It’s almost as though the World she wrote about has lost it anyway is it is this is it testament to the struggles of the Sami People in the 20th century; it is also a description of how hard the nomadic life can be when we follow the life of the twins in a harsher world, and where life is a struggle day to day.She also little snippets of everyday life from the way they live or what they carry, those little things that set them apart but mean so much in their nomadic world. One of the reasons I wanted to get to this book was I felt it would be a strong contender for the Man Booker International Prize, and it is always handy to get those 500-page novels out of the way before the long list is announced. I found, but to be fair, this book is nearer half the size in pages as it is all told in three lines and that means about fifty to sixty words on each page. So if you like sparse yet powerful family histories and growing up in an indigenous background, this is a book for you. Have you read this book?

Winston score A I gave this book an A as it already feels like it could be one of my books for the year

Conversation of Three wayfarers by Peter Weiss

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Conversation of the three wayfarers

German fiction

Original title – Das Gespräch der drei Gehenden

Translator –  E B Garside

Source – Personal copy

A big dig into the books that came out in 1962, and I found this it is a writer I had heard a little about but hadn’t gotten to, and this book seemed perfect it is just 90 pages long. Peter Weiss was a member of the post-war gruppe 47 Writers in Germany, but he left Germany in 1939 and lived in Sweden with his family he was one of the most avant-garde writers of his generation he wrote for the stage and novels. He is maybe one of the writers in his generation who should have been better known to the English-speaking world.In the post-war years, he was a critical voice in a lot of the events of the sixties, Cuba and Vietnam being two of them. He is a writer that was hard to pigeonhole. He had been compared at times to Roman Noveau writers and absurdist writers like Beckett.

That ring res big did nothing bus ily walk

leather caps and long raincoats, they called themselves Abel, Babel and Cabel, and while they walked they talked to each other. They walked and looked around and saw what there was to see, and they talked about it and about other things that had happened. When one was talking the two others kept still and listened or looked around and listened to something else, and when one of them had finished saying what he had to say, the second one spoke up, and then the third, and the others listened or thought about something else.

They had stout boots for walking, but they carried only as much with them as would fit into the pockets of their clothes, as much as they could quickly lay their hands on and put away again. Since they looked alike they were taken for brothers by passersby, but they were not brothers at all, they were only men who walked walked walked, having met each other by chance, Abel and Babel, and then Abel, Babel and Cabel. Abel and Babel had met each other on the bridge,

The opening lines of the book and you see how the brothers merge into one at times.

The book is a strange one it is about three brothers called Abel, Babel and Cabel. We spend time as they tell tales of the wanderings. But we never quite know who is talking to us and that we seem to drift in time over the years. As three men recount events. We see a bridge, but even before the bridge is there, the brothers are talking to the Ferryman about his son, his life and the world he lives in. Then a tale of crossing to marry his bride he got pregnant. Then other odd tales of men wandering with just a slipper to fix something. These are odd snippets of everyday life told in a way that makes you, as a reader drawn into the book. The book has no real plot it has sections narrated by different narrators, be we never know which of the brothers it is telling the tale.

Once, in the summertime, a party of guests came running down to the shore, many threw off their clothes, others jumped into the water with their clothes on, and some of them swam out, one of them coming toward him. The ferryman sat still in his boat and saw how the head in the water was drawing nearer, with the mouth making soft blowing sounds. The swimmer came up to the side of the boat, the ferryman already could see the whites of his eyes shining, and the swimmer’s hands stretched out, and the body came after them, and Jym was standing in the boat, bolt upright, naked, dripping.

He stood there for some seconds, or minutes, the ferryman did not tell me just how long, then he again dived into the water, headfirst, swam back to the shore.

The Ferryman one of the main characters in the tales they tell.

This is a book that needs to be short as it makes your mind spin the way it drifts, but it all seems to flow and not jar, which is a wonderful job of the writer and the translator to keep it feeling like that. I was imagining the time traveller in H G Wellls Time traveller as he drifts through time and things appear and disappear. I loved the passage with the ferryman, a job long gone, a man who saw people across a river daily. We see his world and his sons, who he feels will follow him to be ferrymen. But then there is a bridge that is new than old. Time flows forward and back in the book. He also has a clever way of seeing little details like the sound of the ferry, those little trinkets we can all recount that noise and smell we remember of a mundane event. This is a flat book but with these little gems scattered through it. An odd book and a little gem Have you read Peter Weiss.

Winston’s score – A He should be better known a writer who is unique in his style.

 

A System so Magnificent it is blinding by Amanda Svensson

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A System so Magnificent it is Blinding by Amanda Svensson

Swedish Fiction

Original title – Ett system så magnifikt att det bländar

Translator – Nichola Smalley

Source – Personal copy

There are always one or two books on the Booker longlist that are new to me. There is so many books coming out it is hard to follow everything that comes out in Translation every year.  I had Read Nichola’s other book she had translated on the Booker longlist. SO knew this, like her other translation, would be a  complex book. Amanda Svensson won two large book prizes in Sweden with this book. She has written four novels. This is her last to be published in Swedish but is the first to be translated into English. The book follows a set of triplets. It is a complex book of many layers and narratives.

Like his own to Violetta, from the day she came into the picture until what happened finally happened.

During his years with Violetta, Sebastian had spent more and more time with her family, and less and less with his own. Perhaps it was easier to belong in a context where belonging was less a matter of course.

Violetta was also an only child. Shed learned at an early age to demand the love Sebastian had taken for granted – to stop at nothing to get

As I say her death is a void in this family

The book follows the Isaksson triplets, that have spread themselves all around the world. When an event draws them all back to their Homeland Sweden the Father has gone missing, but as this happens, their mother throws them a curve ball over the origins alongside the father disappearing. The main Triplet is Sebastian he is settled in London a leading scientist in his field, and has joined the strange London Institute of Cognitive Science. He has a patient he is working with that only sees the world in two dimensions (this made me remember the scene in  Supermen where the villains are sent into exile in a 2d world). Then Clara visits Easter Island to join a Doomsday cult, but as she visits the island a few times, she bumps into someone related to Sebastian’s boss. This is how the stories cross over. Then there is the final triplet. Matilda has escaped Berlin to her Hokmeland as she is on the run from a colour. These stories cross and intersect at times this is a complex book then we have a space well what may have been the space filled by Sebastian’s girlfriend that committed suicide and has often left a void in those she touched with in the family.

He got off at Mornington Crescent. A Dalmatian peed on a lamppost, the tiles on the Tube station opposite shone blood-red in the sunshine. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and caramelised almonds and expensive perfume evaporating from the sweaty skin of women, it smelled of marijuana. Sebastian was, by nature, a very honest person, he rarely lied to anyone, not even to himself – naturally, he knew why hed come here. He wanted to see her house, her door, her windows, he wanted to see the magnolia in her garden that she’d spoken about with a kind of tenderness in her vocal cords. He wanted to see her child, perhaps. Her husband, her shopping bags, her pot plants, if she had any. He tried to convince himself that this wasn’t pathological behaviour, but he wasnt sure. Was it really so strange, to want to know everything about another person? Wasnt that the very essence of love?

I like the locations in London and Mornington Crescent always makes me smile.

I must admit I struggled with this one I think more than it not being a great book, it was the wrong time for me to read the book; its reading spanned the House move. I had read about 35%  before we moved and then hadn’t returned to it till last week, so I maybe should restart the book, but the book follows the triplets. The part of the book I connected with the most top was the bits in London; it made me wonder if she had spent a much time in London. Especially mention of Mornington Crescent made me wonder if she was a radio four fan, as well as it is a game on I’m Sorry, I haven’t a clue. This is part family saga, part road movie sprinkled with some magic realism. I could picture Wim Wenders in his prime making this a world-shaking road movie film with the triplets at its heart. It has humour at times, but to me, I wonder if it needed unpicking and would make a striking quartet of books the triplets and then the space left by Violetta’s death, it is a book brimming with ideas and stories, but m,e as a reader would like a few things tied up better at times. Also felt it could be a book double the size to fill the bits I maybe want to know about but didn’t get answers for, if that makes sense; she seems like a writer full of great ideas to write about. But this is one of those sprawling books that maybe needs to be read few times to fully get the sense of all that happens. It is hard. I want to love this one, but I felt it just missed the mark for me.,

Winstons score – -B I just maybe read it at the wrong time. I may reread it at some point and see if I feel better about it.

Cigarette by Per Hagman

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Cigarette by Per Hagman

Swedish fiction

Original title – Cigarett

Translator -Elinor Fahrman

Source – review copy

I have enjoyed all the books that Nordisk books have been bring out Duncan the owner seems to have great taste for the books he selects from Scandinavia. Her we have the debut novel from the Swedish writer `Per Hagman this caused a scandal when it first came out in the early nineties as the Local literary press say how can a serious publisher put out a book which is just a lost of nights out and drugs and one night stands and call it a novel. Per Hagman at the time maybe lived the life of the narrator of this book he early on in his career he made a living out working in restaurant whilst he worked as a freelance writer and dj at the same time. Cigarette was his debut novel he has since written 6 more novels his second novel Pool was made into a film. This is his debut in English.

Viktor arrives with four bottles of wine. He asks how far in we are and Micke says he’s on his fourth or fifth beer.

“Better hurry up then” He pulls a corkscrew out of his pocket and smile. Victor looks splendidly correct in his white shirt and black tie and expensive which corduroys. Probably has something to do with him being a secretary or something at some law firm.

One of the first nights out described in the books as they start drinking

The book follows our Narrator as we follow his life as he works as a waiter in the Hard Rock Cafe in Stockholm the year is 1989 (which is about the time I first start to go out so this remind me partly of my journey in my late teens and early twenties when I went out and drank most weekends) This is a man that like many of this generation works maybe that is just working he tries to get by then live it hard at night with the people he work Micke with those he has seen in the Hard Rock Cafe those pretty folks follows his nights out after work the girls . Then the flip side of that is also seen the connection with his parents when they visit also the past is a counter point to the drinking the drugs and the culture of the time  which Hagman shows his narrator doing. For me it was like falling back thirty years remember the way I avoid work at times and used to go out. What it captures is a age gone it is as I said in the intro just a auto fiction piece of. nights out. It is a world of Hedonism that maybe isn’t there anymore.

Start work at half nine. I’m pretty much the only one of the staff who didn’t go out the night before. everyone’s hangover and sluggish the final couple of hours and I find out the police raided the Pipeline last night and that Melody might be closing down.

Lunch starts and the daily special is fish burger and we joke about how disgusting it looks and hope it’s not the staff food.

There is always the Morning after the night before but he missed out (I thought about how the face of here where I have lived since my mid twenties the changing bars , clubs I wonder if the Stockholm of the book is still there I doubt it!!)

It is hard to describe the book as it is just nights out and it is compelling if like me that was your life in a small part it was the last gasp of a world before the smartphone took over. Hagman is known for this type of novel books that capture the hedonism of living at night of going out of one night stands drinking and drugs . I think this is a far away land to me know I rarely drink these days mainly my monthly or so lads night (well now afternoon out ) and I was never one for drugs. I have even been a non smoker for nearly 8 years(I love the Swedish cover of this book which has a nod to the old gitanes cigarette packing). this was a cult classic I can see why its a shame it didn’t come out at the time the 90s it would sat well along books from the likes of Irvine welsh, those early Will self books, Alex Garland  and Brett Easton Ellis ( what maybe was the culture of the time that lad culture that was just coming to the fore in the early 90s)  all capture in some part the hedonism and maybe last time we meet had sex and it wasn’t an app or such that have changed this world of dating and nights out for ever. I feel it is largely a work of Auto fiction it seems this may have been the writers own world in some part. so if you were a fan of some of the writers I have mentioned or just want a book describing being young in 90’s Stockholm this would be the book for you ? Have you a favourite book that touches your teen – twenties ?

Winstons score – A – A reminder of a bygone time and way of life a lost world of youth

Some Of Kind Company by Nan Östman

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Some Kind of Company by Nan Östman

Swedish Fiction

Original Title –  Ett slags sällskap

Translator – Julia Rivers

Source – Review copy

I am always happy when I get approached by a new Publisher. Aspal Prime is a new small publisher that has brought out the later life novel of Swedish writer Nan Östman a writer best known for writing children’s fiction. In her earlier fiction, the was a recurrent theme of English Culture and Literature.  also girls and women Apart from some detective fiction she wrote with her husband. Her children’s books were the most borrowed books from Swedish libraries in the ’80s. She published this book when she was well in her seventies an observance of someone of similar age to her. This was the first time she had ventured into Adult fiction she published another adult after that she passed away in her nineties in 2015.

I must make one thing clear straight away, even if it sounds foolish. I believe people can advertise for almost anything in Personal ads and others will reply. So, as the English say – No sex please. I think it sounds a bit less clumsy and a little more nonchalant in English, Though stillsilly. But it’s best to say it straight out. There are men who are still virile well into old age( according to what I have read and heard) and  I believe specialist erotica for old people is now available in books and films. Well I am quite prudish and have nothing to offer a hungry old man in that respect.

In her first reply to Bo she makes it clear what she is after a platonic thing.

The book follows a woman in her seventies that is maybe a classic example of an empty nester her kids have gone and Marieanne’s marriage to Hakan has reached that point where they are two ships in the night a lot of the love has gone and there is a silence in their life. She is a translator and is worried that at some point her work may dry up and then where would she be. So she decides to take out an advert for a penpal a male friend to write with she gets a reply from a widower Bo and the two start talking he is an archivist and lost his wife as the two chat Anne is cagey at first about Hakan and their situation but as they talk we see how there life is and what it is like growing old. This is a book about the later part of life and what happens when those nearest become distant or as in Bo’s case aren’t there. It is a tale of being stuck in later life on the inside of loneliness and loveless marriage. she has it all but inside the marriage, it is a very different story. Hakan is a difficult man a quiet man that has lost his wife.

Dear Archivist

You seem to be more interested in Hakan than in me! And it feel as though you are taking his part, That is understandable, It is hardly  a recomendation of me that I have driven my husband to silence, That is what you think, isn’t it, even if tou don’t say it out loud.

The fact is that I don’t discuss Hakan with unkown people and barely with those I do know. We shall see later if it is possible for you to qualify as being someone who can be confided in, first you have to actualy make some effort.

Later he asks aboth her and Hakan but she is cagey at first about their marriage and what had happened to it.

This is one of the reasons I love smaller publishers and their ability to maybe take chances on books that the larger publishers wouldn’t. Now Nan Östman is a very well-known writer in her time and this was one of those rare gems of a writer take a chance and producing a great book in later life. One imagines maybe a lot of Anne’s world is that of the writer herself the comfortable but the life the Anne and Hakan have is far from that inside. What we have is a view of later life Marriage a book about when two older lonely souls connecting her and Bo meet and their shared loneliness is an insight. I enjoyed this book it is very different from all the other Nordic books I have read. As the translator says in the intro Nan uses her own life and her view of Swedish society. At its heart is Loneliness and how we deal with it they are both examples of people that in later life can be lonely the widower that lost his wife early and the empty nester with the Husband that has drifted away from her.

Winstons Score – -A , a hidden gem rediscovered and a perfect first read for Woman in translation month.

Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichý

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Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichý

Swedish fiction

Original title – Eländet

Translator – Nichola Smalley

Source – sent from the translator

I swapped a couple of books from and other stories for a copy of the TLS  I had that included a review of this book in I have met Nochola the translator of this book via her work at And other stories a couple of times, so it is a shame it has taken me a while to get to a review of books she has translated. looking up about the writer I came across this quote which seemed to sum him up as a writer. “Andrzej Tichý is a writer who, time and time again, with a language that sings, says something important about the Swedish contemporary. Read him”. He has lived in Sweden since 1981 born in Prague to a Polish mother and Czech father there is a sense of the great Mittel European writers in his work. 

The way the wax plant flowers moved, those small movements, that trembling, that gentle vibrating, like an echo of the moving trings, combined with the low-frequency tone, the rumble – all that lingered in my consciousness as I saw the newly built tower block and the figures on its roof, with the railway tracks and rail yard in the background, all while I tried to say something to the guitarist and the composer about scelsi and my microtonal worl. We walked toward the central station to take the the train to Copenhagen, to Vor Frue Kirke and the moosmann concert.

Where he meets the Junkie and his past falls back into his world and those year flood back

This book is told in a feverish manner at times what happened when a cellist comes face to face with a spun out Junkie for the second book in a row we have a sort of Proustian moment where this one single event leads the Ccellist into a journey through his past and the sense that he broke free of it a part of growing up in the Housing projects with a group of what in the day would be slackers this is an ode to the early nineties and the urban world he grew up in of skaters, junkies, rappers. Where there are Parties and clubs but he remembers that it was also a road to nowhere, as the memories of his past come tumbling in on him. This is all told in slang as we see his early jobs also the tension of the multi-cultural community he lives in just bubbling below the surface. He is the present is due to give a concert with two other musicians of the work Giacinto Scelsi the Italian modernist composer. This a story of breaking out but also the sense of loss of the comrade brothers he left behind in the melting post he grew up in.

THen a car pulled up. A man got out and other things. Then a car pulled. A man got out and asked if they wanted work. Employment, he said, Earn a little money, he said, they asked what they’d be doing.. Handing out flyers, he said. For his building firm. Go aroundthe wealthy neighbourhoods and stuff a few flyers through letterboxes. They asked how much they’d get five hundred. To share. Course we will, they said. That’s a lot of money, they thought. They got in the car. He drove them to the wealthy neighbourhood. They got a stack each. Took a side each and put them in the letterboxesas he drove behind them, crept along along slowly behind them

A classic ilustration of GEnration X the McJobs cash in hand jobs struggling to get by.

A lot of reviews I have seen of this book have mentioned Bernhard it hard not to avoid that as the book is told in a similar style of breathless prose, as the past comes flooding into his mind but jumbled up like a montage of his life with no real gaps as you get caught up in the cellist’s past and his thoughts of the world he grew up in. This is like a sample of his past mixtape of memories. The clash of high and low culture is shown here from his early love of street beats of the hip hop of the day over the modern music of Scelsi (I will put my hand up again her I know nothing of him just what I have read my modern classical knowledge is little) and the hip hop he likes is different to the bands I knew at the time but it reminds me of going to clubs in UK, Holland, and Germany late nights. Then time spent in cities like Manchester, Newcastle, Nimwegen, Kassel, and Dortmund at the similar time to this so the group he described remind me of my german friends although we didn’t do drugs we like a drink and clubs. This is a song about breaking free of the past. But there will always be that reminder of the past.

Winstons score – A- ( a Bernhard fan got score well with me)

 

 

We’ll call you by Jacob Sundberg

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We’ll call you by Jacob Sundberg

Swedish fiction

Original title – Vi hör av oss

Translator – Duncan J lewis

Source – review copy

I recently did a collection of books from Norway for the Publisher of this book Nordisk books here is my list I will at a later date be doing another list for them. Anyway, enough advertising myself lol. Jacob grew up in a working-class area he says on his website and he saw the towns fall down as industries shut and the folk remain stoic. So he decided to come to London is search of a tweed jacket and pipes a vision of a user that he found had gone well I have a Twitter friend that was a tweed fan but pipe smoking isn’t the thing although I had a pipe in my twenties and own a tweed jacket. Oh well, he left and returned to Sweden and he lives near Småland. It is worth looking at his website the intro about himself even translated into English via Google is very funny. Yes, this is a comic book in fact it is a book about modern life and the humor they’re within.

But the main reason for Hansson wanting to look relaxed and untterly untroubled when the man walked in , as that he to all appearances was a foreigner. He had an exotic name: Said Ansari. If there was anything Hansson wished for it was that these poor refugees would feel welcome, treated the same was as everyone else. To be unruffled in this situation was , in other words , absolutely necessary

Said could of course be a good kid in spite of his orgins, thought Hansson He was after all very careful to treat everyone equallym even foreigners, yes especially foreigners, something he often pointed out, I barely see that they’re different from us, that they’re dark and swarthy, he used to say, He didn’t think such thungs, for he saw the person inside, he was a really good man, that’s what everyone thought.

This just shows what will happen to Hansson that feeling he is maybe not as PC as he things is just under the surface here!!

As I said this is a collection of stories around modern life jobs the interviews we all have to do these days. There are nine stories in the collection I’m going to mention two that I liked. The first is the first story in the collection An exotic touch see Alfred  Hansson is interviewing people for a new job in his business when he has the next candidate Said Ansari is where it all starts to fall apart for Hansson as he gets himself into a sort of Political correctness maze in trying to be PC but wanting to discover more about this man and his exotic name he just ends up in a real twist. Hansson is one of those people that in trying to be correct just keeps putting his foot in his mouth. will Said take the job will Hansson give him the right impression of the company? The second story is another interview here for an office supply company in the story That’s just so me. We see Carina going for an interview at the company One Eniar Bark had built from scratch an office supply company that had seen of competitors in the area he trades in over the years. So when carina is interviewed Einar starts talking about himself his business holidays with the wife, like a time he had a splendid pizza in Italy. He occasionally lets carina talk at one point she says she has a passion for painting and this leads him to reveal a longing to be a poet and for him to show her a poem. Which she says is great. But when later he says he looks for honesty in his staff what is she to do about his dreadful poem be honest or not! how will he react? Elsewhere there is a cu that offends, a singer winning a pop idol contest, and a man trying to escape going to his school reunion.

A stone, A black stone

Big as a mountain

It blocked the way

Everyone was astonished

who can dislodge the stone?

A character approached

His face like flint

Followed by cinders

He. He can dislodge the stone

Everyone was astonished

The stone turned to sand

Carin wait, thought there would be more. When he looked up she said “Great”

“Not exactly oine of my best ones, I wrote it whe I was building the warehouse There was lots of hurdles, They didn;t want a warehouse here

EInar shows Carina his awful poem she initally says Greay but what will she say later on when he asks again!

This is a witty collection of reflections on modern life and how we can all get in twists. The two examples I choose both have a point where things start to go wrong. The man Hansson is just one of those people that is trying to be too PC but gets in such a twist by not saying what he should instead off that he goes around the bush and ending up sound worse than he wanted to and the second story we see what happens when an Ego is interview Einar has a huge Ego and Carina maybe can’t see this as she just sees a windbag. But when she has a chance what is she to do !! These are funny stories that even though set in Sweden still ring true to the \Engoish reader I could see characters I have met and worked within most of the characters in this book. From someone that wants the truth but really doesn’t to the person that will let one thing out of place upset them as we see when a Mug is in the wrong place. A great collection for a dark winter night a laugh or two and a book that can be read in an evening. Have you a favorite comic story?

The siege of Troy by Theodor Kallifatides

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The siege of Troy by Theodor Kallifatides

Swedish fiction

Original title – Slaget om Troja

Translator – Marlaine Delargy

Source – review copy

Here is a work by the Greek Immigrant Swedish writer Theodor Kalifatides after doing his military service in Greece he emigrated in his early twenties to Sweden. First, as a teacher of philosophy as a school at the university, he was then editor of one of the best know Swedish literary magazines. He has written over forty novels he was one of the first writers to touch on immigration in Swedish fiction. He was chairman of Swedish pen in the nineties here he has taken a classic greek work and reworked it around the world war two.

So I thought I would do that too. I will tell you the story of the Iliad from memory for as long we’re sitting here.”It’s not as if we have anything else to do””

That was true. WE didn’t have anything else to do in the cave, apart from trying to protect ourselves from the assorted bugs.

“So when was thios war ?” Dimitra asked.

“”It was very long time ago- more than three thousand years,” Miss replied.

Dimittra sighed. “Can’t wait”.

Miss took no notice. I didn’t think it sounded very excing either, but as I said we didn’t have much else to do, so Miss began her story

She told of her hearing Homer from professional actor when she was a young girl. The boys aren’t to keen at first but they get gripped by it.

This is told from the perspective of a pupil at a small Greek village we never know his name his friend is called Dimitra. As it is nearing the end of the second world war and the Germans are still in Greece but there is a sense of the end. But they are being bombed when they end up in a cave and the young female teacher that they adore even when later she has found herself a boyfriend our narrator forgives her. She decides the best way to take the boy’s and girls’ minds of the bombing and what has been happening she decides to recount the Iliad from memory. As a child, she had seen it told to her by an old man a performer that went from town to town doing Homer works. Initially they arent keen but she grabs them with this 3000-year-old tale!So as the days go by we are given small chunks of the Trojan war this is interspersed with the events around the village as the children rush to her there teacher telling the next part of the story like Helen and her two loves that eventually they face each other in battle. These battles are mirrored in the real world.

The two armies rushed at each other like waves rushing towards the rocks, Honors were even to begin with, and both sides lost many men and horses it wasn’t until the afternoon that Acheans gained the upper hand, not least to agamemnon their supreme commander, who strode along mowing down his opponents like a farmer scything his wheat. He showed no mercy, not even when two inexperienced young men fell to their knees and begged for their lives. It is the first time we kill that is difficult after that, it quickly becomes habit.

The great Greek leader Agamemnon in the war is fearless and ruuthless as he kills at will maybe an echo to the present !!

This is a clever way to make the work of Homer available to new readers, I am not well-read in the classics .but this is a clever way to open the door to classics. He has made it readable by trim parts of the original but making you want to read the original. There is also a clever mirroring of the events that are read and the events in the present for Miss and her pupils. The Iliad showed the horrors of the Trojan war but we maybe could have done with a more violent present would have been interesting but the main character is just 15 and not yet a man he knows what is happening but isn’t involved so we just see the glimpse a 15 year would see of the war of the Nazi’s parading around. He had reworked The Iliad into a more mortal version of the work playing down the god’s role which given the setting of Miss telling the story to her adoring pupils is apt.

 

Welcome to America by Linda Boström Knausgård

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Welcome to America by Linda Boström Knausgård

Swedish fiction

Original title – Välkommen til Amerika

Translator – Martin Aitken

Source – review copy

I featured this on my woman in translation month covers post it is the second novel by the Swedish novelist Linda Bostrom Knaugard is the ex-wife of the Norwegian writer Karl Ove and her mother was a well known Swedish actress. She has written three novels her first glimpse of fame was a dark collection of short stories called Grand Mal.  She has bipolar which was part of a Swedish documentary about her life living with it. She has also written a daily column for a regional Swedish newspaper.

He was dead. All at once, great spaces opened inside me. Spaces the silence filed, An immense calm came over me in the beginning, and the sense that this what had always been missing.

I never let on to anyone about me, god, and my dad. That knowledge was something I had to bear myself

What else did my thought say? They lurked and pounced on me. The were noisy, and I batted the air with my hab=nds, the way you do to swat a fly

This shows how she reacted to her fathers death and the thoughts about him.

Welcome top America has a young narrator called Ellen. Her family is a strange collection her brother is barricaded in his room and is using bottles to urinate in. Her mother is an actress she is also the rock of the family and is acting as thou every in the family is normal. She struggles with her daughters silence and what she says. Ellen is under the belief she has killed her father. The father is mentally ill and he has been institutionalized and has terrorized the family for. years but he has died and the past is shown in Ellen remember how he was with them,. Ellen has stopped talking what we have is her internal monologue on those around her family of light as she says about her family this comes from her mother. Our narrator often wished her father died for the way he had made the family feel so when she prayed for him to die in a fire and that happens it sends her into a mute spiral of guilt.

Before, I would often go with my mum to the theatre. I don’t do that anymore, I hear her go lout and come back The last time I saw her perform she was a fallen statu of liberty wishing the immigrants welcome to America. She was bald, with a shard of mirror stuck on her brow. She’d lost her torch. I loved it. The way they’d made her up. The way she shone and shone on the stage. Welcome to america, Welcom to America

I felt the urge to write those exact words in my notebook. But I stopped myself. You’ve got to be strict. You can’t just follow the impulses that criss-cross the mind in their little tunnels of light.I could see my thoughts.They were everywhere

The lines she quotes are mixed up later with an image of her father saying them as well.

This is a short dark powerful book the paperback is 122 pages but or huge text and well-spaced out so is more of a novella than a novel. It shows the exploding from the child’s view when one has an abusive parent from isolation to silence in the two children and in a way with the in denial it has effect everyone. Ellen is a stark narrator she has captured that child-like view of the world very black and white and how the guilt of prayer for what would be a new life without her father there has cost her the voice and made her withdraw. The mother keeps them together but is also in denial about what happened the title is a reference to the fact she is in a play about the Statue of Liberty and this is maybe a nod to what it says on the statue “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” Tis is just what this family need the light of liberty and the healing of liberty ! A powerful work this is like a mini-series taken down to a great trailer it seems more than it parts.

 

The faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg

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The Faculty of Dreams

The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg

Swedish fiction

Original title – Drömfakulteten

Translator – Deborah Bragan-Turner

Source – review copy

This is the second of the Man Booker longlist that wasn’t out at the time the Longlist came out. But it was brought forward and came out a few weeks after. Sara Stridsberg was trained as a Lawyer but decide she wants to be a writer. She won acclaim for her first novel Happy Sally wich liked this book focused on a real person in that book it was the first Scandinavian woman to swim the English Channel. She has also worked as a translator. She worked on the Swedish version of The SCUM Manifesto from the main character of this book Valerie Solanas. This book won the Nordic council literature prize the biggest prize in Scandinavian fiction

A hotel room in the tenderloin, San Francisco’s red-light district. It is Alril 1988 and Valerie Solanas is lying on a filfthy mattress and urine-soaked sheets, dying of pneumonia,Outside the window, pink neon lights flash and porn music plays day and night.

On April 30 her body is found by hotel staff. The police report states that she is found kneeling by the side of her bed( has she tried to get up?Has she been srying?) It states that the room is in perfect order, papers neatly piled on the desk, clothes folded on a wooden chair by the window. The police reports also states that her body is covered with maggiots and her death probably occurred around April 25

The opening is the sad end of this poor womans life.

This book is a novel that tries to build a life for the radical feminist Valerie Solanas. She wrote the radical SCUM Manifesto. That put forward the theory that Man had ruined the world and it was up to the woman to mend the world and get rid of all the men. The society of cutting men as it stood for. This follows her life from her tough childhood where she was abused and ended up at a young age on the streets battling to get to college and how to see ended up in the New York her life is a mix of ups and downs and also a lot of mental illness so she never quite seems to have control of her world and even some of her friends like cosmo and silk boy verge on being surreal the action is told in conversations with Valerie both with the likes of Andy Warhol whom she had sent a play to that was too graphic for even him. She even ended up with a part in one of his films. She was on the verges of his factory scene. But that leads to what is maybe what she was most famous for and that was trying to kill him after she had a turn and want the script back she had sent him years earlier and shot him. There is clips of the trail what Stridsberg tries to build is a fuller picture of this deeply troubled woman. Her frequent visit to mental hospitals shows how fragile she was.

The Narrators

A. A heart full of black flies. The loneliness of a desert. Landscape of stones. Cowboys. Wild mustangs. An alaphbet of bad experiences.

B. Blue soke on the mountains. I am the only sane one here.There were no real cowboys. There were no real pictures. I vacuumed all the rooms; the dust was still there. I cleaned all the windows; I still could not breathe. It had something to do with the construction. The sun burned through the umbrellas.

C. The american film. The camera’s lie’s. World literature’s. America was a big adventure with its unreal blue mountains, its desert landscape.

The books has couple of alphabets like this one.

I was aware of Valerie mainly as she is part of the song cycle that Lou Reed and John Cale did for the songs of Drella which mentions Valerie and what happened with Andy. Sara has tired here to maybe make her seem a slightly more complete person rather than have that one event be the epitaph of her life. This pieces her life from her abuse and living her family and the times on the streets which meant she sold her body and also it fixed those ideas which she wrote about in her Manifesto as all men as a rapist. Her view was extremes but this shows how they were formed by her own life which was tragic. She also recently featured in an Episode of American horror story the cult series but this is maybe the best version of her life it brings a cinematic view of her life. I was reminded of some French novels of recent years that also take a real person as the central figure and build a novel around it from HHHH to The adversary and build a life narrative like that.