The Details by Ia Genberg

First published in Sweden in 2022; published in translation by HarperVia on August 8, 2023

The Details is about “lives within our lives,” our “smaller lives with people who come and go.” The novel’s narrator, a woman who is aging into her senior years, recalls fragments of her past, memories triggered by fever, “people filing in and out of my face in no particular order.”

The narrator reminds me of the recurring “Sprockets” sketch on SNL. Mike Meyers played Dieter, a pretentious, humorless, self-absorbed German art/film critic who hosted a talk show. Dieter had little interest in his guests, whose responses to his questions typically made him feel “emotionally obliterated.” The protagonist in The Details suffered from some of the same self-inflicted melancholy when she was younger. In the grip of fever, however, her sense of self recedes and she embraces joy sparked by random memories of having lived. Or so she claims.

To be fair, the narrator asserts that even her younger self, always observational, was capable of “letting myself go and directing my attention outward,” where she found “a sharper sense of being alive” in “the alert gaze of another.” My impression is that her outward-directed attention is largely directed at mirrors or their human equivalent — people who reflected her attitudes and desires.

Like Dieter, the novel’s narrator is a brooding intellectual. She values deep conversations and rejects everything that is too shallow or superficial to meet her standard of worthy interaction. She condemns MTV and television shows in general (“To get absorbed by a show, to let yourself be swept up, would have been a sign of mental lassitude”). She has the same attitude about magazines, political debates, and conversations at family gatherings, viewing them only as “incidences of current trends, available to interpret for a deeper understanding of the world.” She doesn’t like people who tell anecdotes (“a form of chronic illness that attaches to some people”). Like Dieter, she is a humorless critic of her surroundings.

The narrator has fevered memories of four people who played important roles in her life. She first shares her memories of Johanna, a woman of velocity whose enthusiasm contrasted with the narrator’s inertia. She remembers Johanna’s kindness and kisses, their general agreement about literature (both are fans of Paul Auster), and Johanna’s encouraging remarks about the narrator’s writing (in contrast to lovers who didn’t want to read her writing, or those who wanted to read her writing but “didn’t get it, or who got it but had nothing intelligent to say.” The narrator’s relationship with Johanna made her feel safe because “she had started on me and wouldn’t give up.” The narrator is stunned by Johanna’s “sudden and brutal departure.” Perhaps the narrator believes Johanna gave up, but my sense that is that the narrator gave up on moving toward the future and Johanna grew frustrated with the narrator’s inability to set or achieve goals.

Before Johanna, the narrator shared an apartment with Niki. While Niki was messy, moody, and impulsive, she was also brilliant and funny. Their relationship was intense until Niki left for Galway with a guy named James. The narrator accepted Niki’s father’s request to track her down when Niki’s mother became ill. The quest proves Niki to be capricious and emotionally unstable, although it isn’t clear that the narrator sees her that way.

The third memory is of Alejandro, who arrived at the turn of the Millenium. Alejandro danced on stage for a jazz band. The narrator has deeply meaningful sex with Alejandro, sex that permits her “authenticity in the midst of this act, without a single thought in my head, without imitation, to be permitted to wreck my life once more.” What this means, beyond the narrator’s impression that they made a connection, is unclear to me. In any event, he became the lover against whom all other were measured. When Alejandro disappeared from her life under ambiguous circumstances, he left ambiguity in his wake. There seems to be a pattern of lovers suddenly leaving the narrator, but the narrator never asks herself whether she might be responsible for those abrupt departures.

Birgitte, a woman adrift who was shaped by her childhood trauma, is the fourth memory. Her shallowness, conflict avoidance, and “absence of personality” would not seem to make her memorable, but Birgitte is the narrator’s mother. She gave birth to the narrator during a “psychotic break.” For a time, she was into psychology and astrology and crystals and tarot cards, apparently giving them all equal weight. She was (according to the narrator) a “seeker,” a derisive term that implies “a pose, a new way of being superficial.” Divorced from Birgitte for fifteen years, her father cried when she died, wept for “a life lived but also spilled.” The narrator has little to say about Birgitte. Perhaps the narrator is choosing not to remember anything positive about her mother, the things that made her father mourn Birgitte’s passing.

Readers who are turned off by paragraphs that run for two or three pages should look for a different book. The density of the text requires some concentration. Some readers don’t want to make the effort. I don’t fault those readers, but I don’t fault writers for not catering to readers who prefer short chapters and plentiful paragraph breaks so they know where to place a bookmark.

I am probably similar to those lovers of the narrator who have “nothing intelligent to say” about the author’s writing. The narrator is something of a Debbie Downer. Not to stereotype, but whenever I pick up a work of Scandinavian literature, I prepare myself for an aftermath of depression. The Details fits that pattern.

I appreciate the details that accumulate in the pages of The Details. I appreciate the narrator’s ability to discuss failed relationships without obvious bitterness. I appreciate the concept of people who play important roles in our lives before they drift away or choose to disappear.

The novel is marketed as a book that demonstrates how connections shape a life, but I don’t see much shaping. How did the significant people in her life affect the narrator? I’m not sure. Her take seems to be: They were here, they’re gone, life moves on. I get that. I expect that we are more inclined to think about people who come and go as we gain age and experience. I suppose there is value in illustrating the transitory nature of most relationships, but I came away from The Details with an equal mix of admiration and indifference.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Winter Water by Susanne Jansson

Published in Sweden in 2020; published in translation by Grand Central Publishing on December 7, 2021

Winter Water straddles the border between crime fiction and horror. The story begins with a missing child, an overused crime fiction concept that challenges writers, usually without success, to take a fresh approach. Susanne Jansson meets the challenge by using ambiguity to create the suspense that most missing child novels lack. Did four-year-old Adam fall into the ocean and drown? His bucket at the water’s edge and the discovery of his boot in the water lend support to that theory. But Martin, Adam’s father, has been receiving anonymous threats, perhaps related to a property dispute with his neighbor. Is it possible that the neighbor, or someone else, kidnapped the child? And what should we make of other children who have disappeared in the same location and on the same day, January 11, during the last half century?

Martin theorizes that a little girl who drowned in the 1960s is calling other children to join her. He finds some evidence to support that view and even feels the pull himself, heightening the supernatural theme. A woman named Maya who befriends Martin as he struggles with loss and despair pursues the theory that the child was kidnapped. Maya has done some part-time police photography that has fueled her investigative instincts. She uncovers ambiguous evidence to support her kidnapping theory, although she nearly dies in the attempt to prove she’s right.

Uncertainty builds suspense as Martin tries to go about his life during the year following the disappearance, always wondering about Adam and occasionally feeling the temptation to join him if he, in fact, accepted a drowned girl’s invitation to meet her beneath the waves. Maya’s investigation, on the other hand, seems to reach a dead end until new information helps her pull some clues together. Even after Adam’s fate is revealed, suspense continues to drive the story.

The characterization in Winter Water is more subtle than a reader might expect from a missing child story. Martin understandably falls apart, feeling the guilt of failing to prevent his son’s disappearance. His wife holds it together for the sake a new baby until their roles reverse and she falls apart. All of this is handled with admirable restraint. Where an American writer might have turned out horribly weepy scenes, Scandinavian writers seem to take tragedy and depression in stride, regarding them (as they often are) as a natural part of life that can be depicted without melodrama. Maya also gains sympathy in a relationship subplot as her investigation impedes a blossoming romance.

Jansson skillfully blends the conventions of crime fiction and horror stories to keep the reader guessing about Adam for most of the novel. Both theories about Adam's disappearance are plausible (at least for readers who suspend their disbelief in the supernatural for the sake of a good story). Without spoiling the clever plot, I can say that in some sense, both theories are valid. Jansson’s ability to balance the genres should make Winter Water appealing to horror fans and crime fiction fans, or to any reader who enjoys a good story.

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The Survivors by Alex Schulman

First published in Sweden in 2020; published in translation by Doubleday on October 5, 2021

Three sons and two dysfunctional parents are the only significant characters in The Survivors. The sons reunite for their mother’s funeral, their father having died years earlier. The funeral requires a change of plan when the kids discover a note that their mother left behind. The reader does not learn the content of the note until the novel’s end, as it reveals a fact that Alex Schulman keeps secret until the novel’s late stages. The secret changes the reader’s understanding of the events that precede its revelation.

Much of the story consists of memories of unpleasant childhoods, scattered across the story that takes place in the present. The memories are “spread out like Lego bricks” for a therapist (and the reader) to examine. Transitions between time frames are not always clear. The story is sometimes disorienting, an effect that I assume Schulman intended.

The parents were educated and had refined sensibilities, but they lived in poverty. They gave their kids “an upper-class upbringing that somehow occurred below the poverty line.” The children’s “academic upbringing had been undertaken halfheartedly; it began with great to-do but was never completed.” At some point, the parents lost energy and their parenting project ground to a halt.

Mom was usually sullen but sometimes erupted in emotional outbursts. The kids found making Mom happy to be a hit-or-miss task at which they usually missed, although she did little to encourage their efforts. She seemed to have more affection for the dog than for her boys, although even the dog earned inconsistent attention. Dad had an anger management problem, compounded by a drinking problem that he shared with Mom. Dad spent time with the kids only when he felt a need to alleviate his loneliness.

The brothers are Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre. “Benjamin was always trying to get closer to his parents; Nils wanted to get away.” Nils, who had “special standing” with his parents because he was a good student, feels he was abused by his two brothers. Pierre feels he was abused by his parents and blames his brothers for not protecting him. Even before an electric shock induced visual disturbances, Benjamin had moments when he disassociated from reality.

The parents once encouraged the three bothers to have a swimming contest, then went inside for a nap, apparently unconcerned whether the kids were capable of swimming to a distant buoy. Nor were the parents particularly attentive when Benjamin nearly electrocuted himself at an abandoned power station. That event is significant not just to Benjamin, but to the plot that eventually unfolds. Benjamin felt “a deep love for his father in spite of everything,” but Benjamin lived in his own world. His memories, like his perceptions of the present, might not be reliable.

For much of the novel, the story feels true to its Swedish origins. Gloom overwhelms the characters and threatens to infect the reader. The therapist is a familiar fixture in Scandinavian literature. We only catch a late glimpse of a therapy session, but it is the breakthrough session that reveals the hidden truth, a truth that has been distorted by memory. The truth is known to the therapist, who wastes no time dropping it in Benjamin’s lap. Her hurry to get to the point comes as a relief, as the time the reader spends with this dysfunctional family is far from joyful.

Still, the lives of the depressive characters have some interesting moments and the story is nicely detailed. The woods, the lake, the power station, the cabin — all are easy to visualize, as are the sullen characters. The story is at times maddeningly ambiguous, and it is only at the end that the reader realizes how those ambiguities serve the story. My reaction to the big reveal was more “huh” than “wow,” but I admired the skill with which the story is constructed.

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Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

First published in Sweden in 2019; published in translation by Atria Books on September 8, 2020

Anxious People is a novel about a bank robbery that triggers a hostage drama. But no, it’s really a novel about a desperate man who jumps from a bridge and a desperate girl who doesn’t. But no, it’s not really about any of that. Fredrik Backman tells us that Anxious People is about idiots because that’s what we all are: idiots who are doing the best we can. Anxious People is a sweet, unpredictable, laugh-out-loud story of diverse individuals who begin to overcome their anxieties by recognizing the need to let go of the past while embracing a more compassionate future.

Abandoned by a spouse who had an affair and desperate for money to avoid eviction and an ensuing loss of child custody, a parent makes the unfortunate decision to rob a bank. The robbery is futile because the robber unwittingly chooses a cashless bank. The fleeing robber dashes through the nearest door and up a light of stairs where a realtor is showing an apartment. By wielding a gun that the robber assumes to be a toy, a hostage situation begins. Or maybe not, because the robber doesn’t want to frighten anyone and taking hostages was never part of the plan.

The story is driven by the quirky personalities of each person attending the apartment showing. From time to time we also encounter Jim and Jack, police officers who are father and son. Backman mixes in transcripts of Jack’s interviews with the hostages after they are released. None of the hostages are particularly good at being interviewed, but they are quite good at infuriating Jack. The interviews digress into silliness that makes a strong contribution to the story’s merriment.

As the title suggests, the characters are anxious. A couple of them are anxious to buy the apartment, but all are anxious in the sense of experiencing anxiety. They seem to be concerned about how others perceive them, taking political correctness to extremes for fear of being seen as prejudiced when they discuss gay people — except for Julia and Ro, lesbians who are expecting a child. They argue constantly, perhaps because they enjoy making up.

Competing against Julia and Ro for the apartment are Roger and Ana-Lena, an older couple who may be together as a function of habit rather than connection. Roger is obsessively competitive (he makes money by flipping apartments) while Ana-Lena feels the need to explain what Roger means every time Roger speaks.

Lennart appears in the story after he is forced out of the apartment’s bathroom because Julia needs to use it. Lennart has no pants but is wearing a rabbit head. Despite his unconventional attire, Lennart is probably the story’s most idealistic character. Apartments typically come up for sale because of death or divorce, but Lennart believes there’s something romantic about all the apartments that aren’t for sale. It is possible to imagine that they are occupied by happy couples.

Zara and Estelle have each attended the showing for reasons unrelated to a desire to purchase the property. Estelle is an older woman learning to live without her husband, a man who was everything to her despite having little in common with her. Zara, a prosperous banker who annoys her therapist, is acerbic and judgmental, making it no surprise that she’s lonely. Zara is surprised to discover a connection between her therapist and one of the other characters.

Jim and Jack love each other, as father and son should, but don’t know how to express it, as fathers and sons almost never do. Jack is among the characters who have been touched by the man who jumped from the bridge ten years earlier. Jack became a cop with the noble purpose of saving people, but it is up to his father to teach Jack that making an arrest isn’t always the best way to save someone.

The hostage drama triggers empathy in each of the characters, all of whom have at some point been frightened and lost, all of whom felt anxiety before the robber appeared. We live in a world we share with strangers who harbor the same anxieties. We brush against each other and, as Backman illustrates, we have an impact on each other in ways we may never understand.

Each character in Anxious People makes a bit of progress toward anxiety relief, because one bit at a time is all that anyone can manage. We start by admitting that there’s “an ache in our soul, invisible lead weights in our blood, an indescribable pressure in our chest,” and by recognizing that other people feel the same way. We try to internalize the belief that things we blame ourselves for are not always our fault. We make an effort to understand other people and to care about them, even if they are not like us, because caring about others is essential to caring about ourselves.

Letting go of negativity and all the unimportant things that anchor us might create anxiety in the form of uncertainty, but not knowing what happens next is a good starting point from which to build a better life. If we are nothing more than the sum of our experiences, Backman says, we could not live with ourselves. “We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.” Sometimes we need someone to give us a second chance. Sometimes we need to give ourselves one.

Backman keeps the reader guessing about the bank robber’s fate. Will the robber escape and, if so, how? Backman dangles possibilities to make the reader think “I know how the robber escapes” before foreclosing them. So there’s an element of mystery, but the plot exists largely to frame the characters and to showcase their anxieties and the lessons they learn. And to make the reader laugh, a goal Backman accomplishes on every page.

I suppose there’s a degree of sappiness in the self-help advice that Backman offers, but the story is told with so much heart and humor that even the most cynical reader should be able to embrace it. Whether or not a reader appreciates Backman’s lessons, it would be difficult to dislike the characters or to avoid laughing at them in recognition that they are, like us, idiots who are doing the best they can.

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The Rabbit Hunter by Lars Kepler

Published in Sweden in 2016. First published in translation in the UK in 2018. Published in a slightly different translation by Knopf on January 14, 2020.

The serial killer who baffles the police in The Rabbit Hunter wears long leather straps around his head that are strung with rabbit ears. So yeah, he’s weird, but serial killers are weird by nature. That’s probably why thriller writers love to imagine them, even though actual serial killers are relatively rare. If we must have another serial killer novel, at least we can have one in which the killer really ramps up the weirdness.

Sweden’s foreign minister was murdered while he was consorting with prostitutes. Saga Bauer, an officer who specializes in counterterrorism with the Security Police, investigates the killing. One of the prostitutes heard the killer say something that suggests other murders are on the horizon. Bauer thinks a suspected terrorist named Salim Ratjen might have relevant information about an apparent assassination plot, but Ratjen is in prison and unlikely to be cooperative.

Enter Joona Linda, who has starred in five earlier novels by the writing team that calls itself Lars Kepler. Linda begins this one in prison where he’s serving a sentence for assisting an escape and assaulting a guard. He’s looking forward to spending the rest of his life not being a police officer until the prime minister shows up with Bauer and asks Linda to get into Ratjen’s head.

The scene shifts frequently after the premise is established, although it shifts away from prison relatively quickly. Other murders occur as promised, but they don’t seem political. What ties them together is unclear, thus setting up the classic serial killer plot as the police try to figure out who will die next.

Linda is released from prison to continue the terrorism investigation despite his growing sense that the foreign minister’s slaying wasn’t an act of terrorism. Bodies drop and clues pile up until the real reason for the killings — the fact that links them and that explains the rabbit ears — is revealed.

The Rabbit Hunter is a longish book with a complex plot that delves deeply into the lives of privileged people who will likely die before the story ends. Some readers might think they deserve to die. Other readers might think that some of the characters, at least, are fairly sympathetic individuals who have atoned for their past. Either way, their fate shouldn’t be in the hands of a killer who wears rabbit ears, or even one who dresses more conventionally. Interestingly, the killer receives less character development than the victims, in part because his identity is concealed for most of the novel. We do, however, get a good sense of the kind of the shattered childhood that might produce a serial killer.

Kepler manufactures tension in the manner of a good film director. Kepler describes a crucial element of a scene, then describes something that might or might not be important — a shadow, a loud noise, tree branches moving without wind. Suspense builds but the reader is never quite sure whether something eventful is about to happen. Until the end, at least, when the action erupts. The ending doesn’t seem forced but it might be faulted for being a bit too karmic to be realistic. Still, with all the violence and death that ensues throughout the story, it would be hard to classify the finish as an entirely happy ending. It also comes with the touch of bitter irony. The ending might best be characterized as a respite from bleakness which, in Scandinavian thrillers, is the best for which a reader can hope. And in the tradition of Scandinavian thrillers, the respite is worth waiting for even if it’s a long time coming.

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