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The Details
An acclaimed Swedish author makes her English language debut with this intoxicating novel in the vein of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, about a woman in the throes of a fever remembering the important people in her past, her memories laid bare in vivid detail as her body temperature rises.
A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman's own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.
There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who gleefully campaigns for a baby even though he knows their love has no future. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret.
The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.
A woman lies bedridden from a high fever. Suddenly she is struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the woman's own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.
There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who gleefully campaigns for a baby even though he knows their love has no future. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a painful secret.
The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.
136 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 7, 2022
About the author
Ia Genberg
7 books120 followersIa Gabriella Genberg (born 5 November 1967) is a Swedish journalist and novelist.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, she debuted as a writer in 2012 with the novel Söta fredag ("Sweet Friday"). Her fourth novel, Detaljerna ("The Details"), won the August Prize in 2022, the year of its publication. The English translation, by Kira Josefsson, was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.
Author Picture: Sara Mac Key
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, she debuted as a writer in 2012 with the novel Söta fredag ("Sweet Friday"). Her fourth novel, Detaljerna ("The Details"), won the August Prize in 2022, the year of its publication. The English translation, by Kira Josefsson, was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.
Author Picture: Sara Mac Key
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,230 reviews
April 2, 2024
This book does what it says on the tin: the magic truly is in the details. Some will say this is a novel where "nothing happens" but I think that's actually the point. The Details encourages us to slow down and stop looking at the big picture of life, disrupting the linear model of the novel and instead focusing on four individual people in one woman's immediate circle, divided into four sections respectively. This is about the impression each person has on our lives, and the rich tapestry of idiosyncrasies, habits, hobbies, and traits that make up a person. In hermetic, crystalline prose, Ia Genberg contemplates what it is to be human and to exist in the world, as well as in a community. I loved it and couldn't put it down. My pen rank out of ink because there were so many quotes I underlined.
Ultimately, it asks the question: "Who is the real subject of a painting, the person being painted or the one holding the brush?"
Easy 5/5
Ultimately, it asks the question: "Who is the real subject of a painting, the person being painted or the one holding the brush?"
Easy 5/5
November 30, 2024
Do you have a novel that is inextricably linked to a time and place in life where even just the thought of it, siphons up emotions across time? Suffering from a fevered state, the narrator in Ia Genberg’s The Details experiences such a voyage down memory lane on the wings of literature and observes that ‘some books stay in your bones long after their titles and details have slipped from memory.’ This striking and succinct Swedish novella was awarded he August Prize for fiction in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker in its impressive English translation from Kira Josefsson. A story sure to stir the souls of those with a profound fondness for the written word for its examination of the connections we form with books and with whom we read them, The Details is also a deeply soul-searching investigation on the ways the self is shaped by those around us. The way we ‘let them become part of me’ becomes the thread the narrator untangles across this non-linear novella. With acute observations and majestic prose, Genberg’s The Details is a moving look at the way we carry the past with us and ‘that in some sense no relationship ever ends.’
‘In one way life begins anew each day and every second but is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself.’
I cannot help but swoon at the way Genberg’s examination of the self is informed by the novels one has read. In bed with a vague illness, the narrator reaches for an old copy of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy only to find herself pulled back two decades previous down the halls of memory by an inscription from her then-girlfriend, Johanna, who gifted her the book during a similar state of illness. Her fever burns across the pages in the intensity of the prose and the feverish fashion in which the story avoids linearity as ‘time folds in on itself’, not progressing along a chronological plot but instead circling the timeline as ideas leap into others.
It presents a wider scope of the narrator’s “self” with all the different pasts and present spiraling together. But it also becomes a method to juxtapose the people she knew with the ways the their fingerprints on her life present themselves later. ‘That's all there is to the self, or the so-called 'self': traces of the people we rub up against,’ she observes and this is, essentially, the core lesson of the The Details: that we are made of, quite literally, of small details.
‘That’s where this sharper sense of being alive is found, in the alert gaze on another.’
Books are an important part of the relationships examined in The Details. ‘Literature was our favorite game,’ she thinks about her time with Johanna, ‘hermetic but nimble, both simple and twisted, at once paranoid and crystalline, and with an open sky between every word.’ Later, a battered copy of Birgitta Trotzig’s Dykungens dotter is all that remains after her roommate Niki vanishes from her life. Books, like relationships, are an ephemeral affair, but highly significant.
I enjoy how Genberg has books serving as monuments to moments that would be lost to time if books weren’t also a portal of memory and emotional resonance.
The story moves through four key figures in her life. There is the aforementioned ex-girlfriend, who she will later feel a sense of betrayal from when during an interview she claims to have never liked Paul Auster. Next is Niki, a roommate with an intensity ‘as if the full cast of Greek gods and all the emotions and states they represented had been crammed in behind her eyelids.’ Then there is the relationship with Alejandro that strikes and leaves like a storm.
The push and pull between temporality and legacy creates an excellent emotional tension, particularly as the juxtaposition of Alejandro’s brevity in the text with the lasting impact from their collision of selves. Finally we come to Birgitte and issues of trust, with Birgitte’s anxieties that are not all that unlike a description of the narrative structure of the novel:
Though while the book explores these four characters, what we gain most of is an understanding of the narrator as reflected back in them and through them. It becomes like those fun-house hall of mirrors, where each person is made up of the residue left from each encounter with others and reflecting each other back upon one another until where one ends and the other begins starts to blur.
‘And I suppose that's what's at the heart of it for every person suffering from anxiety; the fact that life, by its very nature, is impossible to manage.’
Not unlike the relationships in the novel, The Detail is brief yet powerful. A wonderful examination of the self and the way we shape and are shaped by those around us as well as a lovely tribute to the power of literature, this is a truly moving and thought provoking work. The love of literature shines brightly here. Oh, and in regards to my opening question, Crime and Punishment, 2666 and The Passion all transport me to the moment of my first read with them. This book also made me realize how much I enjoy the connection with people here on goodreads and the conversations and discussions we share. Thank you to books, thank you for all of you.
4.5/5
‘In one way life begins anew each day and every second but is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself.’
I cannot help but swoon at the way Genberg’s examination of the self is informed by the novels one has read. In bed with a vague illness, the narrator reaches for an old copy of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy only to find herself pulled back two decades previous down the halls of memory by an inscription from her then-girlfriend, Johanna, who gifted her the book during a similar state of illness. Her fever burns across the pages in the intensity of the prose and the feverish fashion in which the story avoids linearity as ‘time folds in on itself’, not progressing along a chronological plot but instead circling the timeline as ideas leap into others.
‘As far as the dead are concerned, chronology has no import and all that matters are the details, the degree of density, this how and what and everything to do with who.’
It presents a wider scope of the narrator’s “self” with all the different pasts and present spiraling together. But it also becomes a method to juxtapose the people she knew with the ways the their fingerprints on her life present themselves later. ‘That's all there is to the self, or the so-called 'self': traces of the people we rub up against,’ she observes and this is, essentially, the core lesson of the The Details: that we are made of, quite literally, of small details.
‘That’s where this sharper sense of being alive is found, in the alert gaze on another.’
Books are an important part of the relationships examined in The Details. ‘Literature was our favorite game,’ she thinks about her time with Johanna, ‘hermetic but nimble, both simple and twisted, at once paranoid and crystalline, and with an open sky between every word.’ Later, a battered copy of Birgitta Trotzig’s Dykungens dotter is all that remains after her roommate Niki vanishes from her life. Books, like relationships, are an ephemeral affair, but highly significant.
‘the ownership of books was distinct from other types of ownership, more like a loan that might run out or be transferred onto someone else at the drop of a hat.’
I enjoy how Genberg has books serving as monuments to moments that would be lost to time if books weren’t also a portal of memory and emotional resonance.
The story moves through four key figures in her life. There is the aforementioned ex-girlfriend, who she will later feel a sense of betrayal from when during an interview she claims to have never liked Paul Auster. Next is Niki, a roommate with an intensity ‘as if the full cast of Greek gods and all the emotions and states they represented had been crammed in behind her eyelids.’ Then there is the relationship with Alejandro that strikes and leaves like a storm.
‘our relationship was the length of a breath and yet he stayed with me, as if there was something in me that bent around him, a new paradigm for all my future verbs.’
The push and pull between temporality and legacy creates an excellent emotional tension, particularly as the juxtaposition of Alejandro’s brevity in the text with the lasting impact from their collision of selves. Finally we come to Birgitte and issues of trust, with Birgitte’s anxieties that are not all that unlike a description of the narrative structure of the novel:
‘to run ahead and touch everything, circle potentialities with the intention of preventing them from happening, on and on and on in a process that never stops.’
Though while the book explores these four characters, what we gain most of is an understanding of the narrator as reflected back in them and through them. It becomes like those fun-house hall of mirrors, where each person is made up of the residue left from each encounter with others and reflecting each other back upon one another until where one ends and the other begins starts to blur.
‘And I suppose that's what's at the heart of it for every person suffering from anxiety; the fact that life, by its very nature, is impossible to manage.’
Not unlike the relationships in the novel, The Detail is brief yet powerful. A wonderful examination of the self and the way we shape and are shaped by those around us as well as a lovely tribute to the power of literature, this is a truly moving and thought provoking work. The love of literature shines brightly here. Oh, and in regards to my opening question, Crime and Punishment, 2666 and The Passion all transport me to the moment of my first read with them. This book also made me realize how much I enjoy the connection with people here on goodreads and the conversations and discussions we share. Thank you to books, thank you for all of you.
4.5/5
July 3, 2024
This book delves deep into the roles of identity, deception, and what is real versus perceived. Each of the characters in the book is created intelligently with both their actions and what motivates them being swathed in ambiguity and intrigue. With the audiobook, we are able to get an inward look into the thought processes of the characters and the mystery that is unfolding.
For fans of psychological thrillers who are looking for an audiobook that will not only maintain the suspense but also get deeply into the content, ("The Details" Audiobook) is a great exploration of the deep crevices of the human mind. For readers and listeners who are doing this for commutes or just want to pass some time from the comfort of their own home.
For fans of psychological thrillers who are looking for an audiobook that will not only maintain the suspense but also get deeply into the content, ("The Details" Audiobook) is a great exploration of the deep crevices of the human mind. For readers and listeners who are doing this for commutes or just want to pass some time from the comfort of their own home.
April 9, 2024
Update 9.04: Now Shortlisted to The Booker International Prize 2024
Now Longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2024
The Details, the short novel written by the Swedish author Ia Genberg, is a mystery to me. I have no idea why I liked this novel. It won the most prestigious literary prize in Sweden, Augustpriset so there must be something about it. I read it because Samuel compared with Knausgard, who is one of my favourite writers. The translator named The Details “a Quiet novel” and it is. At the first glance the book isn’t about anything much, but I guess it is all in “the details”.
While afflicted with fever, a woman starts remembering parts of her life and the people who were most important to her. It all starts when she opens a book she received from a former lover. We are transported from this lover to a friend and then to another lover. The ending takes us to the most important person in one’s life, the mother.
The four portraits help create the picture of the narrator, of her life. “That's all there is to the self, or the so-called 'self': traces of the people we rub up against. I loved Joanna's words and gestures and let them become part of me, intentionally or not. I suppose that is at the core of every relationship and the reason that in some sense no relationship ever ends.”
At a first glance it is nothing special, I’ve read tens of first person memoir style novels, completely fictional as this one or inspired from reality. However, this one stuck with me and it even made me cry at the end.
Now Longlisted for the Booker International Prize 2024
The Details, the short novel written by the Swedish author Ia Genberg, is a mystery to me. I have no idea why I liked this novel. It won the most prestigious literary prize in Sweden, Augustpriset so there must be something about it. I read it because Samuel compared with Knausgard, who is one of my favourite writers. The translator named The Details “a Quiet novel” and it is. At the first glance the book isn’t about anything much, but I guess it is all in “the details”.
While afflicted with fever, a woman starts remembering parts of her life and the people who were most important to her. It all starts when she opens a book she received from a former lover. We are transported from this lover to a friend and then to another lover. The ending takes us to the most important person in one’s life, the mother.
The four portraits help create the picture of the narrator, of her life. “That's all there is to the self, or the so-called 'self': traces of the people we rub up against. I loved Joanna's words and gestures and let them become part of me, intentionally or not. I suppose that is at the core of every relationship and the reason that in some sense no relationship ever ends.”
At a first glance it is nothing special, I’ve read tens of first person memoir style novels, completely fictional as this one or inspired from reality. However, this one stuck with me and it even made me cry at the end.
July 6, 2023
Moody compelling character study from Sweden. Works for me!
I'm not sure how to adequately review The Details. I stumbled upon it on netgalley and was intrigued by the synopsis of this tiny book. Figured if I didn't like it, well, at least it was short. But I ended up liking it a lot.
In this story, a woman gets malaria, and the subsequent fever takes her mind back to four people who have played major roles over the course of her life-- literally with Johanna, for whom she claims "She was my main character."
The narrator draws each character vividly, making me feel drawn into their intimate world. Johanna, Niki, Alejandro, and her mother, Birgitte, felt real, fleshed out and alive. Through each, the narrator captures something of herself, revealing her own life through her connection to others, as well as exploring themes of love, friendship and mental illness.
The synopsis asks Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? And it is the key question here. Because while this book paints a portrait of four different people, the real story being told is that of the narrator. It illuminates the fact that any one person's story is merely an amalgamation of the people who've shaped their lives.
I'm not sure how to adequately review The Details. I stumbled upon it on netgalley and was intrigued by the synopsis of this tiny book. Figured if I didn't like it, well, at least it was short. But I ended up liking it a lot.
In this story, a woman gets malaria, and the subsequent fever takes her mind back to four people who have played major roles over the course of her life-- literally with Johanna, for whom she claims "She was my main character."
The narrator draws each character vividly, making me feel drawn into their intimate world. Johanna, Niki, Alejandro, and her mother, Birgitte, felt real, fleshed out and alive. Through each, the narrator captures something of herself, revealing her own life through her connection to others, as well as exploring themes of love, friendship and mental illness.
The synopsis asks Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? And it is the key question here. Because while this book paints a portrait of four different people, the real story being told is that of the narrator. It illuminates the fact that any one person's story is merely an amalgamation of the people who've shaped their lives.
January 25, 2024
An open sky between every word
The details opens with the narrator, who lies in bed with a fever, opening a novel in which she discovers a dedication of a former lover on the flyleaf. Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy features as the Proustian madeleine, the open sesame that sends the narrator back in time, sparking memories of four people that marked her life.
Having picked this up because I was intrigued by the pieces of photographs that swirl around the covers of both the English and Dutch translations, it is striking how well those covers reflect the non-linear structure of these slices of life in which the narrator from her sickbed reflects on four relationships that have been so hugely significant in her past.
In four chapters, titled along the names of the four people, the narrator sketches four impressionistic portraits of them, not only giving a glimpse of their relationship with the narrator but also subtly, obliquely, revealing more about the narrator herself.
Relationships end, break down, or people simply vanish in a Modiano fashion from her life, culminating in a moving coda which is an ode to the only one who’s presence was not one of the narrator’s choice and for that even more significant. Unlike the common thought that loss implies losing a part of oneself, Genberg on the contrary sheds a light on the lasting imprint others make on the self and points out how crucial real openness is for true connection:
I let myself be impregnated by her way of speaking and being. I let her change me forever. That’s all there is to the self, or the so-called ‘self’: traces of the people we rub up against. I loved Johanna’s words and gestures and let them become part of me, intentionally or not. I suppose that is at the core of every relationship, and the reason that in some sense no relationship ever ends.
Somehow that melancholic thought of the continuity of the traces others leave in our lives is soothing and helpful to look at loss and transience differently, loved ones who disappear from our lives not taking away a piece of ourselves with them nor diminishing our being, rather changing and enriching our existence in a myriad different ways.
Perhaps it is a shared sense of generation, of an existence from and for books, or the moments in which the precariousness of life hits, the experience of loss that render some of the narrator’s observations on her life around the turn of the millennium, the sky-high expectations of youth, the careless exaltation of party life, which reminded me uncannily of those bygone times – perhaps because they go together inevitably with the relatable, likewise experiences of the friends and loves lost.
I used to think that a sharper sense of being alive was to be found in the forest, that I would find it while sitting alone on a tree stump with the sun in my eyes, or while gazing out on the sea from some rocks on the shore; that I could only be fully awake among the silent elements. But it turned out that I already had everything right here, in the details around me, that it’s simply a question of being attentive in looking at all of it, of letting myself go and directing my attention outward, and I mean truly outward.That’s where this sharper sense of being alive is found, in the alert gaze on another.
Genberg’s gentle invitation to transcend sterile navel-gazing and turn outwards to connect with others, regardless of the inescapable feelings of pain and loss such brings, touched a chord. The flavour and the depth of her contemplative, crystalline prose makes her brief and thoughtful novel a burst of apricity, the winter sun warming the face and the mind.
(Photographs by Julia Hetta)
The details opens with the narrator, who lies in bed with a fever, opening a novel in which she discovers a dedication of a former lover on the flyleaf. Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy features as the Proustian madeleine, the open sesame that sends the narrator back in time, sparking memories of four people that marked her life.
Having picked this up because I was intrigued by the pieces of photographs that swirl around the covers of both the English and Dutch translations, it is striking how well those covers reflect the non-linear structure of these slices of life in which the narrator from her sickbed reflects on four relationships that have been so hugely significant in her past.
In four chapters, titled along the names of the four people, the narrator sketches four impressionistic portraits of them, not only giving a glimpse of their relationship with the narrator but also subtly, obliquely, revealing more about the narrator herself.
Relationships end, break down, or people simply vanish in a Modiano fashion from her life, culminating in a moving coda which is an ode to the only one who’s presence was not one of the narrator’s choice and for that even more significant. Unlike the common thought that loss implies losing a part of oneself, Genberg on the contrary sheds a light on the lasting imprint others make on the self and points out how crucial real openness is for true connection:
I let myself be impregnated by her way of speaking and being. I let her change me forever. That’s all there is to the self, or the so-called ‘self’: traces of the people we rub up against. I loved Johanna’s words and gestures and let them become part of me, intentionally or not. I suppose that is at the core of every relationship, and the reason that in some sense no relationship ever ends.
Somehow that melancholic thought of the continuity of the traces others leave in our lives is soothing and helpful to look at loss and transience differently, loved ones who disappear from our lives not taking away a piece of ourselves with them nor diminishing our being, rather changing and enriching our existence in a myriad different ways.
Perhaps it is a shared sense of generation, of an existence from and for books, or the moments in which the precariousness of life hits, the experience of loss that render some of the narrator’s observations on her life around the turn of the millennium, the sky-high expectations of youth, the careless exaltation of party life, which reminded me uncannily of those bygone times – perhaps because they go together inevitably with the relatable, likewise experiences of the friends and loves lost.
I used to think that a sharper sense of being alive was to be found in the forest, that I would find it while sitting alone on a tree stump with the sun in my eyes, or while gazing out on the sea from some rocks on the shore; that I could only be fully awake among the silent elements. But it turned out that I already had everything right here, in the details around me, that it’s simply a question of being attentive in looking at all of it, of letting myself go and directing my attention outward, and I mean truly outward.That’s where this sharper sense of being alive is found, in the alert gaze on another.
Genberg’s gentle invitation to transcend sterile navel-gazing and turn outwards to connect with others, regardless of the inescapable feelings of pain and loss such brings, touched a chord. The flavour and the depth of her contemplative, crystalline prose makes her brief and thoughtful novel a burst of apricity, the winter sun warming the face and the mind.
(Photographs by Julia Hetta)
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August 7, 2024
UNA MANCIATA DI RICORDI
Viviamo così tante vite dentro una vita sola, vite più piccole con persone che vanno e vengono, amici che spariscono, figli che crescono, e io non sono ancora riuscita a capire quale sia quella che le abbraccia tutte quante.
Il titolo è I dettagli, ma non è di piccole cose, di aspetti marginali, minimalisti che si parla: al contrario raccontando la vita di cinque persone – due amiche e due amanti, una donna e uno uomo, per finire con la madre – Ia Genberg racconta la sua stessa esistenza. O, viceversa.
Piccolo, breve libro, molto intenso, si è rivelato una magnifica insperata sorpresa, suggerimento di lettura prezioso. La classica gemma. Le perle sono il primo e l’ultimo capitolo. Nel primo si narra di un ex fidanzata, Johanna, che sembrava destinata a restare, per sempre, con la stessa tenacia con la quale non abbandonava mai un libro senza averlo finito: ma poi, invece, in un batter di ciglia è uscita dalla vita di Ia, senza rimpianto e senza esitazione, per andare a ottenere le mete cui mirava, i successi, la carriera.
E poi la madre che in principio Ia racconta come se fosse un’amica, finché a un tratto la vita di Birgitte raggiunge la vetta più alta e più bassa allo stesso tempo: più bassa perché l’ansia la divora e resterà per sempre la sua “malattia” condannandola a fine prematura, più alta perché in quel momento partorisce la sua primogenita, Ia per l’appunto.
Il ‘desiderio’ non sembrò altro che ‘desiderio’ finché non mi persi là dentro e ci rimasi. Allora si manifestò sotto un’altra forma, come un’intesa nata nella magia del momento, quando quegli spazi dentro di noi che non possono toccarsi finalmente si sfiorarono. Poter essere me stessa fino in fondo, al centro di quell’atto, senza pensieri per la testa, senza fingere, poter di nuovo fare a pezzi la mia vita in santa pace. In quei momenti mi sentivo vicinissima a me stessa, proprio sul crinale, ma trovare Alejandro lì, nella mia carne, io che ero un’introversa, trovarlo lì come se ci aspettassimo da sempre, e poi il sudore e il fuoco, il mio e il suo, che subito diventò il nostro.
Nonostante questi siano per me i due momenti più alti, le citazioni che riporto vengono da uno dei capitoli centrali, dedicato a un fascinosissimo amante e a un’amica generosa. Cinque storie di gente che entra nella vita di Ia, per uscirne. Ma ognuno lascia un segno, una traccia, una presenza: non sono ferite le loro uscite di scena, son le cose della vita, parte del processo che è esistere. Genberg riesce a essere densa, consolante e struggente al contempo, qualità rara.
Carl Larsson
Da allora in poi tutti quelli che ho amato – o ‘amato’ - si sono dovuti inevitabilmente misurare con lui in un paio di momenti agli inizi della relazione, e io sono stata costretta a schiarirmi la gola più volte per scacciare quei pensieri, perché erano irrazionali e per di più ingiusti, e perché quel confronto non sarebbe servito a nessuno. Di giorno, quando sono presente a me stessa e in compagnia di gente che conosco solo di sfuggita, riesco a dire che Alejandro è stata una “magnifica bagatella”, ma nei miei sogni ricorrenti lui bussa alla mia porta e mi chiede di seguirlo – “vieni?” – e io prendo la giacca e vado, senza esitare. E senz amai voltarmi indietro.
Peter Vahlefeld
Viviamo così tante vite dentro una vita sola, vite più piccole con persone che vanno e vengono, amici che spariscono, figli che crescono, e io non sono ancora riuscita a capire quale sia quella che le abbraccia tutte quante.
Il titolo è I dettagli, ma non è di piccole cose, di aspetti marginali, minimalisti che si parla: al contrario raccontando la vita di cinque persone – due amiche e due amanti, una donna e uno uomo, per finire con la madre – Ia Genberg racconta la sua stessa esistenza. O, viceversa.
Piccolo, breve libro, molto intenso, si è rivelato una magnifica insperata sorpresa, suggerimento di lettura prezioso. La classica gemma. Le perle sono il primo e l’ultimo capitolo. Nel primo si narra di un ex fidanzata, Johanna, che sembrava destinata a restare, per sempre, con la stessa tenacia con la quale non abbandonava mai un libro senza averlo finito: ma poi, invece, in un batter di ciglia è uscita dalla vita di Ia, senza rimpianto e senza esitazione, per andare a ottenere le mete cui mirava, i successi, la carriera.
E poi la madre che in principio Ia racconta come se fosse un’amica, finché a un tratto la vita di Birgitte raggiunge la vetta più alta e più bassa allo stesso tempo: più bassa perché l’ansia la divora e resterà per sempre la sua “malattia” condannandola a fine prematura, più alta perché in quel momento partorisce la sua primogenita, Ia per l’appunto.
Il ‘desiderio’ non sembrò altro che ‘desiderio’ finché non mi persi là dentro e ci rimasi. Allora si manifestò sotto un’altra forma, come un’intesa nata nella magia del momento, quando quegli spazi dentro di noi che non possono toccarsi finalmente si sfiorarono. Poter essere me stessa fino in fondo, al centro di quell’atto, senza pensieri per la testa, senza fingere, poter di nuovo fare a pezzi la mia vita in santa pace. In quei momenti mi sentivo vicinissima a me stessa, proprio sul crinale, ma trovare Alejandro lì, nella mia carne, io che ero un’introversa, trovarlo lì come se ci aspettassimo da sempre, e poi il sudore e il fuoco, il mio e il suo, che subito diventò il nostro.
Nonostante questi siano per me i due momenti più alti, le citazioni che riporto vengono da uno dei capitoli centrali, dedicato a un fascinosissimo amante e a un’amica generosa. Cinque storie di gente che entra nella vita di Ia, per uscirne. Ma ognuno lascia un segno, una traccia, una presenza: non sono ferite le loro uscite di scena, son le cose della vita, parte del processo che è esistere. Genberg riesce a essere densa, consolante e struggente al contempo, qualità rara.
Carl Larsson
Da allora in poi tutti quelli che ho amato – o ‘amato’ - si sono dovuti inevitabilmente misurare con lui in un paio di momenti agli inizi della relazione, e io sono stata costretta a schiarirmi la gola più volte per scacciare quei pensieri, perché erano irrazionali e per di più ingiusti, e perché quel confronto non sarebbe servito a nessuno. Di giorno, quando sono presente a me stessa e in compagnia di gente che conosco solo di sfuggita, riesco a dire che Alejandro è stata una “magnifica bagatella”, ma nei miei sogni ricorrenti lui bussa alla mia porta e mi chiede di seguirlo – “vieni?” – e io prendo la giacca e vado, senza esitare. E senz amai voltarmi indietro.
Peter Vahlefeld
April 22, 2024
Very deserved short-listed for the International Booker Prize 2024 today! https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booke...
27 translations for this pearl from Sweden, wow, I see that! This was so good, very crystalline and reflective, without many events, yet making people come alive and feeling much denser and meatier than the length of the book suggests
In one way life begins anew each day and every second but is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself
Annie Ernaux has some real competition in this short book from Sweden. I predict a shortlisting for the International Booker Prize (love how I got this right end of January 2024!!) and am awed by the precise, unflashy but cutting and effective novel on mental health, growing into oneself and establishing a position and personality in relation to others.
The main character of The Details has fever and being sick remembers various pivotal moments in her life, based on inscribed books she has around her home.
Initially we learn on her coming to the big city, a capricious girl (In fact I’d rarely encountered a responsibility I didn’t reject ) who uses the power of books to connect with her new milieu (literature was our favorite game).
We discover her ex Johanna, always finalising, and discover fears of the narrator, not being good enough for this upper class girl:
Never being able to keep up with her presents, from the upperclass
My gifts to her, the act of giving l, left me feeling inadequate
There might have been a certain violence to her gifting, a triumphant supremacy that was affirmed each time she sleered a rectangular box across the table
It was a kind of generosity that cost her nothing
To read with a fever is a lottery, and to look back on one's life and how this has shaped you could also be described in that manner:
In one way life begins anew each day and every second but it is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself
Johanna in the end in rather toxic, fleeing her life and making the narrator follow her (if that is a right description, and the complicity of the main character is not to be forgotten): She was my main character, my life was Johanna
I liked the descriptions of student life, with the brewing own wine and moonshine during studies and the feeling of possibility to reinvent oneself.
In a sense all of the episodes of the life of the main character revolve around the question what kind of story one tells about one self, and if that is able to survive the scrutiny of reality:
It wasn’t the kind of truth that mattered to me
We have doomed friendships, a passionate relationship with Alejandro (It seemed like the kind of passion that had to be manifested in the eye of others, a love that blossomed before a witness), doomed from the start.
The drifting nature of life for university educated Swedish people is interesting, we see very little of drive or direction from our main character, and many of the episodes seem especially precious because of the ordered and sheltered nature of her life.
In the final part we have mental health issues and relations with family, before diagnosis and being institutionalised.
The repercussions are profound: She adapted to such a degree that what defined her personality was a lack of personality
Overall, it is very impressive how the writing of Ia Genberg make the characters come alive, without many events. The Details feels much denser and meatier than the length of the book suggests.
This so easily could have been mundane and boring or pretentious but it shows real human heart and commentary on life that I could not give this less than 5 stars.
27 translations for this pearl from Sweden, wow, I see that! This was so good, very crystalline and reflective, without many events, yet making people come alive and feeling much denser and meatier than the length of the book suggests
In one way life begins anew each day and every second but is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself
Annie Ernaux has some real competition in this short book from Sweden. I predict a shortlisting for the International Booker Prize (love how I got this right end of January 2024!!) and am awed by the precise, unflashy but cutting and effective novel on mental health, growing into oneself and establishing a position and personality in relation to others.
The main character of The Details has fever and being sick remembers various pivotal moments in her life, based on inscribed books she has around her home.
Initially we learn on her coming to the big city, a capricious girl (In fact I’d rarely encountered a responsibility I didn’t reject ) who uses the power of books to connect with her new milieu (literature was our favorite game).
We discover her ex Johanna, always finalising, and discover fears of the narrator, not being good enough for this upper class girl:
Never being able to keep up with her presents, from the upperclass
My gifts to her, the act of giving l, left me feeling inadequate
There might have been a certain violence to her gifting, a triumphant supremacy that was affirmed each time she sleered a rectangular box across the table
It was a kind of generosity that cost her nothing
To read with a fever is a lottery, and to look back on one's life and how this has shaped you could also be described in that manner:
In one way life begins anew each day and every second but it is also true I keep returning to the same places in myself
Johanna in the end in rather toxic, fleeing her life and making the narrator follow her (if that is a right description, and the complicity of the main character is not to be forgotten): She was my main character, my life was Johanna
I liked the descriptions of student life, with the brewing own wine and moonshine during studies and the feeling of possibility to reinvent oneself.
In a sense all of the episodes of the life of the main character revolve around the question what kind of story one tells about one self, and if that is able to survive the scrutiny of reality:
It wasn’t the kind of truth that mattered to me
We have doomed friendships, a passionate relationship with Alejandro (It seemed like the kind of passion that had to be manifested in the eye of others, a love that blossomed before a witness), doomed from the start.
The drifting nature of life for university educated Swedish people is interesting, we see very little of drive or direction from our main character, and many of the episodes seem especially precious because of the ordered and sheltered nature of her life.
In the final part we have mental health issues and relations with family, before diagnosis and being institutionalised.
The repercussions are profound: She adapted to such a degree that what defined her personality was a lack of personality
Overall, it is very impressive how the writing of Ia Genberg make the characters come alive, without many events. The Details feels much denser and meatier than the length of the book suggests.
This so easily could have been mundane and boring or pretentious but it shows real human heart and commentary on life that I could not give this less than 5 stars.
March 9, 2024
Melancholia wylewa się z książki, ale to nie dla mnie
May 6, 2022
”Vi lever så många liv inuti våra liv, mindre liv med människor som kommer och går, vänner som försvinner, barn som växer upp, och jag förstår aldrig vilket av mina liv som är själva ramen.”
Underbart är kort, alldeles för kort. Det här är en 152 sidor kort roman med fyra kapitel där vart och ett är personporträtt av någon som berättarjaget varit i relation med. Hon ligger i nuet nerbäddad i sängen med virusrelaterad feber och tänker tillbaka på den tid som flytt; den stormiga kärleksrelationen med Johanna som brände henne för evigt, den skeva ”Babetta-liknande” vänskapen med Niki, otroheten med Alejandro och Birgitte som hon inte kan komma runt. Som bokomslaget och titeln belyser är detaljerna eller skärvorna delar av helheten. Författaren tänker sig att ”helheten kan berättas, med människor som utan rang vandrar in och ut genom mitt ansikte. Ingen ”början” och inget ”slut”, ingen kronologi, bara ögonblicken och det som uppstår där”. Som en röd ram runt helheten finns Sally. Hon beskrivs inte detaljerat som de andra, kanske för att hon finns kvar? Sally framstår för mig som en metafor för svårigheten med att vara i nuet och uppskatta det man har just nu.
Det är en oerhört lockande prosa Ia Grenberg har skrivit, intelligent och innerlig med ett melankoliskt känsloläge men samtidigt tillbakalutad. När jag är i hennes text finns det ingenstans jag hellre vill vara och jag läser hela rasket i ett svep. Detaljerna är hennes fjärde bok (genombrottet), och jag blir sugen på att läsa hennes tidigare verk. Berättarjaget är liksom chill, bisexuell, inte konservativ, till synes frikopplad från det normativa. Hon hoppade av studier i sina yngre år, avslutade sällan några projekt. Festade en del. Hon lockas av personligheter olika hennes egen och hänger ihop med de här drivna människorna som är ganska påfrestande för sin omgivning. Jag tänker på vad fint det är att genom böcker lära känna människor utan att behöva umgås med dem. Jag tänker också på att berättelser består på ett sätt som inte människorna gör.
Detaljerna handlar om hur vi blir till i relationer och separationer men också om litteratur, nostalgi, makt, kärlek och klass. Läs den, snart är det för sent.
Underbart är kort, alldeles för kort. Det här är en 152 sidor kort roman med fyra kapitel där vart och ett är personporträtt av någon som berättarjaget varit i relation med. Hon ligger i nuet nerbäddad i sängen med virusrelaterad feber och tänker tillbaka på den tid som flytt; den stormiga kärleksrelationen med Johanna som brände henne för evigt, den skeva ”Babetta-liknande” vänskapen med Niki, otroheten med Alejandro och Birgitte som hon inte kan komma runt. Som bokomslaget och titeln belyser är detaljerna eller skärvorna delar av helheten. Författaren tänker sig att ”helheten kan berättas, med människor som utan rang vandrar in och ut genom mitt ansikte. Ingen ”början” och inget ”slut”, ingen kronologi, bara ögonblicken och det som uppstår där”. Som en röd ram runt helheten finns Sally. Hon beskrivs inte detaljerat som de andra, kanske för att hon finns kvar? Sally framstår för mig som en metafor för svårigheten med att vara i nuet och uppskatta det man har just nu.
Det är en oerhört lockande prosa Ia Grenberg har skrivit, intelligent och innerlig med ett melankoliskt känsloläge men samtidigt tillbakalutad. När jag är i hennes text finns det ingenstans jag hellre vill vara och jag läser hela rasket i ett svep. Detaljerna är hennes fjärde bok (genombrottet), och jag blir sugen på att läsa hennes tidigare verk. Berättarjaget är liksom chill, bisexuell, inte konservativ, till synes frikopplad från det normativa. Hon hoppade av studier i sina yngre år, avslutade sällan några projekt. Festade en del. Hon lockas av personligheter olika hennes egen och hänger ihop med de här drivna människorna som är ganska påfrestande för sin omgivning. Jag tänker på vad fint det är att genom böcker lära känna människor utan att behöva umgås med dem. Jag tänker också på att berättelser består på ett sätt som inte människorna gör.
Detaljerna handlar om hur vi blir till i relationer och separationer men också om litteratur, nostalgi, makt, kärlek och klass. Läs den, snart är det för sent.
Want to read
March 29, 2024it doesn't get any more no plot just vibes than a bedridden woman with memories
September 24, 2023
This was an absolutely lovely novel that proved to me once more that some writers can create a stone soup of a novel out of nothing at all, and to read it will be life-changing. It reminded me (not for its subject, but for its -subjectivity-) of reading Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik, Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett, In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova. These are very different books in terms of their focus but similar in the way the work through the accumulation of detail and exquisite observation and are part of a tradition that I suppose people who had read Proust (and maybe some who haven't ) would call "Proustian."
April 15, 2024
Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
While I do think that Genberg gets a heightened amount of love because large parts of the Booker list are sheer nonsense, this prize-winning Swedish entry is in fact pretty good. Our bisexual protagonist and narrator is sick with some virus (the novel was written during COVID) and picks up a book, in which she finds an inscription by her former lover Johanna. Extrapolating from that, we enter a fever dream of memory, in which we meet four people that were decisive for the development of the protagonist's character.
There are several striking features worth mentioning: For instance, the narrator is a mother, but the book very much focuses on what she is apart from that - so it works against the current trend of motherhood-centered novels, showing a multi-faceted woman in different roles that she does inhabit or has inhabited, as lover to a man and a woman, as a friend, as a daughter. Then, a lot of what we learn about the narrator is through reflection, through how she is mirrored in the four important people in her life, and what decisions she makes regarding the respective relationships. It's a smart construction, especially as the last of the four chapters is dedicated to her mother, which means that this last puzzle piece encourages readers to re-evaluate everything that has been presented before through a new lens.
As the novel's title suggests, Genberg has set out to illustrate how the details in our life shape us and our relationships, how little bits and pieces gain significance when it comes to becoming who we are. Sure, that's not the most innovative thesis for a novel ever conceived, but the hallucinatory writing is ever-shifting and the characters are all rather intriguing and rendered with great care and depth, so that this held-back, contemplative novel comes together seamlessly. The book also refers to numerous other works of literature, from Paul Auster to Tomas Tranströmer, which you know, is always a hit with extra-literary judging panels (and snobby readers like me! :-)).
Good stuff, not a Booker winner though. (Me saying that heightens the novels chances via karma, I guess! :-))
While I do think that Genberg gets a heightened amount of love because large parts of the Booker list are sheer nonsense, this prize-winning Swedish entry is in fact pretty good. Our bisexual protagonist and narrator is sick with some virus (the novel was written during COVID) and picks up a book, in which she finds an inscription by her former lover Johanna. Extrapolating from that, we enter a fever dream of memory, in which we meet four people that were decisive for the development of the protagonist's character.
There are several striking features worth mentioning: For instance, the narrator is a mother, but the book very much focuses on what she is apart from that - so it works against the current trend of motherhood-centered novels, showing a multi-faceted woman in different roles that she does inhabit or has inhabited, as lover to a man and a woman, as a friend, as a daughter. Then, a lot of what we learn about the narrator is through reflection, through how she is mirrored in the four important people in her life, and what decisions she makes regarding the respective relationships. It's a smart construction, especially as the last of the four chapters is dedicated to her mother, which means that this last puzzle piece encourages readers to re-evaluate everything that has been presented before through a new lens.
As the novel's title suggests, Genberg has set out to illustrate how the details in our life shape us and our relationships, how little bits and pieces gain significance when it comes to becoming who we are. Sure, that's not the most innovative thesis for a novel ever conceived, but the hallucinatory writing is ever-shifting and the characters are all rather intriguing and rendered with great care and depth, so that this held-back, contemplative novel comes together seamlessly. The book also refers to numerous other works of literature, from Paul Auster to Tomas Tranströmer, which you know, is always a hit with extra-literary judging panels (and snobby readers like me! :-)).
Good stuff, not a Booker winner though. (Me saying that heightens the novels chances via karma, I guess! :-))
April 10, 2024
Shortlisted for 2024 International Booker Prize - Mediocre at best. Maybe it was fate to read this after Rachel Cusk. I hate when people are so generous with their comparisons. Yes, Ia Genberg is trying to do what Rachel Cusk does easily... making a novel out of some random stories, but there is no nuance, no sign of something special.
Even the title is so ugly. At least if it were 'The Detail' - it would have meant something. It would have shown that there may be a story there. But no - this is at best a collection of promising characters in search of 4 short stories.
I also had a bad fever last year. No, you can't think so organized during a bad fever. Take Rachel Cusk again. She is alert and 100% present in every scene of her novels. That's why her characters can notice... the details.
Even the title is so ugly. At least if it were 'The Detail' - it would have meant something. It would have shown that there may be a story there. But no - this is at best a collection of promising characters in search of 4 short stories.
I also had a bad fever last year. No, you can't think so organized during a bad fever. Take Rachel Cusk again. She is alert and 100% present in every scene of her novels. That's why her characters can notice... the details.
October 17, 2023
Ия Йенберг е написала страхотна, човешка, обикновено-необикновена книга. Толкова много ми хареса, че категорично влиза в любимците ми за 2023.
Наратива на книгата е от една страна фрагментиран, от друга го усетих изключително подреден, безкрайно емоционален, личен, откровен, интимен и много човешки 🩵 Още с първите изречения влизаме в съзнанието и мислите на главната ни героиня, която е с треска и под влияние на болестта се отправя на мисловно пътешествие към моменти от живота си, детайли, срещи и раздели с хора, които са я оформили и изградили като личност…
Замислих се за това колко лесно пускам хора да си отиват. Вярвам, че понякога някои приятелства не са за цял живот и хората, които минават през него са присъствали с конкретна цел и после можем лесно да се разделим с тях…
“Детайлите” е едно малко книжно бижу с уникално красиво офор��ление и корица на Люба Халева 🩵
Сбор от мисли, спомени, случки, фрагменти, емоции… Среща с любовници, книги, музика, изкуство (във всичките му форми). Случайно или не (избирам да вярвам, че няма случайни неща) в първата част има много препратки към творчеството на Пол Остър и един от любимите ми негови романи - “Ню-Йоркска трилогия”.
“Живеем толкова много животи, побрани вътре в нашия живот - по-малки животи с хора, които идват и си отиват, приятели, които изчезват, деца, които порастват, и аз никога не разбирам кой от моите животи всъщност е рамката. Когато имам висока температура или съм влюбена, всичко изглежда кристално ясно, моят “аз” потъва надълбоко и освобождава място за едно безименно щастие, една цялост, чиито детайли са запазени в своята пълнота, разграничени и отчетливи едни от други.”
Наратива на книгата е от една страна фрагментиран, от друга го усетих изключително подреден, безкрайно емоционален, личен, откровен, интимен и много човешки 🩵 Още с първите изречения влизаме в съзнанието и мислите на главната ни героиня, която е с треска и под влияние на болестта се отправя на мисловно пътешествие към моменти от живота си, детайли, срещи и раздели с хора, които са я оформили и изградили като личност…
Замислих се за това колко лесно пускам хора да си отиват. Вярвам, че понякога някои приятелства не са за цял живот и хората, които минават през него са присъствали с конкретна цел и после можем лесно да се разделим с тях…
“Детайлите” е едно малко книжно бижу с уникално красиво офор��ление и корица на Люба Халева 🩵
Сбор от мисли, спомени, случки, фрагменти, емоции… Среща с любовници, книги, музика, изкуство (във всичките му форми). Случайно или не (избирам да вярвам, че няма случайни неща) в първата част има много препратки към творчеството на Пол Остър и един от любимите ми негови романи - “Ню-Йоркска трилогия”.
“Живеем толкова много животи, побрани вътре в нашия живот - по-малки животи с хора, които идват и си отиват, приятели, които изчезват, деца, които порастват, и аз никога не разбирам кой от моите животи всъщност е рамката. Когато имам висока температура или съм влюбена, всичко изглежда кристално ясно, моят “аз” потъва надълбоко и освобождава място за едно безименно щастие, една цялост, чиито детайли са запазени в своята пълнота, разграничени и отчетливи едни от други.”
January 13, 2023
A deserving winner of Sweden's most prestigious Book Award!
As the devil is in the details, I will have to give away the details around my reading this short novel. Stuck on an airplane for six hours, hoping to escape the hell of Swedish Christmas weather, I had brought my December Dickens, The Satanic Verses and this short volume of Swedish prose.
Well, as you may well know, there is no such thing as a Dickens novel in acceptably big print for a sensitive person to be able to concentrate fully in the thin, dry airplane air full of noise and visual distractions. Even though Dickens is a master of details too, one has to be able to juggle a classroom-sized board of characters moving in and out of action at high speed, so Dickens is clearly a book better suited for a sun-drenched balcony with a view.
Well, my other choice was equally problematic. It has all the issues listed above regarding the Dickens novel PLUS the added spice of a dramatic opening scene with two angelic devils or devilish angels in the process of falling from an exploded aircraft, and detail-heavy as that fall turns out to be, it takes several smallest-possible-print pages for the devil-angels to hit the ground, and to make the sensitive reader (momentarily located at a considerable height above the Atlantic Ocean) enter the deeper circles of Dante's Hell in her head.
Left me with this novel to make it through that hellish flight. And well, I finished it just before touching down. The best description I can give is that it is concerned with how inner and outer circumstances of any given situation define who we are and what we experience.
Small details and big events are equally important.
Choosing your life. Choosing what to read on a plane. Seeing the full picture. Enjoying the details.
As the devil is in the details, I will have to give away the details around my reading this short novel. Stuck on an airplane for six hours, hoping to escape the hell of Swedish Christmas weather, I had brought my December Dickens, The Satanic Verses and this short volume of Swedish prose.
Well, as you may well know, there is no such thing as a Dickens novel in acceptably big print for a sensitive person to be able to concentrate fully in the thin, dry airplane air full of noise and visual distractions. Even though Dickens is a master of details too, one has to be able to juggle a classroom-sized board of characters moving in and out of action at high speed, so Dickens is clearly a book better suited for a sun-drenched balcony with a view.
Well, my other choice was equally problematic. It has all the issues listed above regarding the Dickens novel PLUS the added spice of a dramatic opening scene with two angelic devils or devilish angels in the process of falling from an exploded aircraft, and detail-heavy as that fall turns out to be, it takes several smallest-possible-print pages for the devil-angels to hit the ground, and to make the sensitive reader (momentarily located at a considerable height above the Atlantic Ocean) enter the deeper circles of Dante's Hell in her head.
Left me with this novel to make it through that hellish flight. And well, I finished it just before touching down. The best description I can give is that it is concerned with how inner and outer circumstances of any given situation define who we are and what we experience.
Small details and big events are equally important.
Choosing your life. Choosing what to read on a plane. Seeing the full picture. Enjoying the details.
March 24, 2024
That's all there is to the self, or the so-called 'self': traces of the people we rub up against.
I didn't get on with this book at all: despite its short length, it feels like one of those situations where someone is talking and talking at you (lumps of butter melting on toast, their favourite books, exactly how many mosquito bites they have and where...) but saying nothing. I get that this is about the narrator coming into focus via her narratives of people she's known but the execution bored me: I can read Rachel Cusk endlessly because her non-storytelling fascinates me in itself - this just grated. There's something too precious about a writer writing about their favourite writers. I would have DNF except that I'd heard the last section picks up - it does, but not enough to turn around my verdict.
I didn't get on with this book at all: despite its short length, it feels like one of those situations where someone is talking and talking at you (lumps of butter melting on toast, their favourite books, exactly how many mosquito bites they have and where...) but saying nothing. I get that this is about the narrator coming into focus via her narratives of people she's known but the execution bored me: I can read Rachel Cusk endlessly because her non-storytelling fascinates me in itself - this just grated. There's something too precious about a writer writing about their favourite writers. I would have DNF except that I'd heard the last section picks up - it does, but not enough to turn around my verdict.
April 9, 2024
I let myself be impregnated by her way of speaking and being. I adapted, made my own version of it, let her change me forever. That’s all there is to the self, or the so-called ‘self’: traces of the people we rub up against.
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN America Translation Prize
Shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize - not one I would normally think of as shortlist worthy, but justifies its place from the list.
The Details (2023) is Kira Josefsson's translation of Ia Genberg's Detaljerna (2022), winner of the August Prize in Sweden and shortlisted for a number of other awards. The August Prize citation (translated)
The narrator of the novel is a believer that we are, or at least she is, shaped by those she has known and, particularly loved, and tells her non-linear story by portraits of four significant people in her life. Technically it is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk's annihilated perspective although not followed through with quite the same convinction.
Literature is key to the novel and the narrator's first pen portrait, of a former lover Johanna, starts with their literary similarities and differences:
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 Tin Drum, all sci-fi), she was equally bored but had to struggle to reach the last page. She thought it was her duty to finish a book she’d started–just as she finished all her courses, papers and projects.
Perhaps this was another issue I had with the novel, as the literary references are either unfamiliar to me (a succession of Swedish authors) or against my taste (no to Kundera and Grass, but the two share a love of Paul Auster).
The narrator also comments that Some books stay in your bones long after their titles and details have slipped from memory. But here a number of Goodreads friends who read this novel previously have commented that while they remember enjoying the book at the time, little remains with them, and even a day after finishing the novel I already feel that way. Perhaps, as with the literary references, this was a function of three of the lives portrayed not being terribly of personal interest (millenial tales of casual relationships and socialising), with the third, the author's mother, whose personality was largely shaped by the ongoing trauma from being raped at a young age, more of interest but a slighly uneasy fit with the rest of the story.
On the positive side, the pen portraits are precisely and efficiently sketched, caricatures by necessity in the length available, but ones that bring the narrator's significant others to life (although the narrator has a irritating tic of psychoanalysing them by modern standards the vulnerability-stress model we use today to explain how traumatic experiences have such a different impact on different people would’ve helped me understand her better).
The prose, in Josefsson's translation is excellent, compelling and propulsive, with run-on sentences (apparently even longer in the Swedish original) and the length of the novel is perfect. On the other hand I often reward short novels by immediately re-reading them, and I wasn't particularly inclined to do so for this, as it wasn't clear this was a novel whose incomplete puzzle (in the narrator's closing words) would be any more resolved by doing so.
When I was younger I often thought I should travel more and farther, spend more time in foreign countries, that I should be in a constant state of velocity so that I could get out there and truly live, but with time I have come to understand that everything I was looking for was right here, inside of me, inside the things that surround me, in the money jobs that became my actual jobs, in the constancy of the everyday, in the eyes of the people I meet when I allow my gaze to linger. I’m writing again after the fever, as if an old, welcome wound has opened and started to bleed, and I guess it’s an incomplete puzzle, these pictures of others and whoever they end up portraying.
So mixed views - on the cusp of 3 and 4 stars and one I need to let settle, and perhaps revisit in the context of the wider list.
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN America Translation Prize
Shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize - not one I would normally think of as shortlist worthy, but justifies its place from the list.
The Details (2023) is Kira Josefsson's translation of Ia Genberg's Detaljerna (2022), winner of the August Prize in Sweden and shortlisted for a number of other awards. The August Prize citation (translated)
"In The Details a burning fever becomes a portal to the past and those relationships that once meant everything – in a life that no longer exists. With melancholy, precision and humorous undertones, Ia Genberg conjures the fragments that make up a person, and allows her voice to resonate with its distinctive tonality. In this highly perceptive feel for the small details, an entire world comes alive."
The narrator of the novel is a believer that we are, or at least she is, shaped by those she has known and, particularly loved, and tells her non-linear story by portraits of four significant people in her life. Technically it is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk's annihilated perspective although not followed through with quite the same convinction.
Literature is key to the novel and the narrator's first pen portrait, of a former lover Johanna, starts with their literary similarities and differences:
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 Tin Drum, all sci-fi), she was equally bored but had to struggle to reach the last page. She thought it was her duty to finish a book she’d started–just as she finished all her courses, papers and projects.
Perhaps this was another issue I had with the novel, as the literary references are either unfamiliar to me (a succession of Swedish authors) or against my taste (no to Kundera and Grass, but the two share a love of Paul Auster).
The narrator also comments that Some books stay in your bones long after their titles and details have slipped from memory. But here a number of Goodreads friends who read this novel previously have commented that while they remember enjoying the book at the time, little remains with them, and even a day after finishing the novel I already feel that way. Perhaps, as with the literary references, this was a function of three of the lives portrayed not being terribly of personal interest (millenial tales of casual relationships and socialising), with the third, the author's mother, whose personality was largely shaped by the ongoing trauma from being raped at a young age, more of interest but a slighly uneasy fit with the rest of the story.
On the positive side, the pen portraits are precisely and efficiently sketched, caricatures by necessity in the length available, but ones that bring the narrator's significant others to life (although the narrator has a irritating tic of psychoanalysing them by modern standards the vulnerability-stress model we use today to explain how traumatic experiences have such a different impact on different people would’ve helped me understand her better).
The prose, in Josefsson's translation is excellent, compelling and propulsive, with run-on sentences (apparently even longer in the Swedish original) and the length of the novel is perfect. On the other hand I often reward short novels by immediately re-reading them, and I wasn't particularly inclined to do so for this, as it wasn't clear this was a novel whose incomplete puzzle (in the narrator's closing words) would be any more resolved by doing so.
When I was younger I often thought I should travel more and farther, spend more time in foreign countries, that I should be in a constant state of velocity so that I could get out there and truly live, but with time I have come to understand that everything I was looking for was right here, inside of me, inside the things that surround me, in the money jobs that became my actual jobs, in the constancy of the everyday, in the eyes of the people I meet when I allow my gaze to linger. I’m writing again after the fever, as if an old, welcome wound has opened and started to bleed, and I guess it’s an incomplete puzzle, these pictures of others and whoever they end up portraying.
So mixed views - on the cusp of 3 and 4 stars and one I need to let settle, and perhaps revisit in the context of the wider list.
August 1, 2024
Não é peixe, não é carne. Não tira, não acrescenta. Não aquece, não arrefece.
Continuo a achar que a melhor exportação literária da Suécia é a Pipi das Meias Altas.
Para mim, apegar-me a alguém equivalia a desenhar tatuagens no corpo, a fim de assim conservar todos os detalhes intactos. Todas as pessoas que amara e de quem gostara permaneciam comigo.
Continuo a achar que a melhor exportação literária da Suécia é a Pipi das Meias Altas.
Para mim, apegar-me a alguém equivalia a desenhar tatuagens no corpo, a fim de assim conservar todos os detalhes intactos. Todas as pessoas que amara e de quem gostara permaneciam comigo.
September 8, 2023
Не винаги е уютно да се озовеш в нечия глава, а точно това ми е усещането от “Детайлите”. В крайна сметка, какво е “съзнание” или “индивидуалност”, ако не сбор от случайни и неконтролируеми влияния на различни “детайли”. Детайли, които идват отвън и - намерили подходящата честота - излъчват директно в нас. И детайли, които сами създаваме, мислейки си, че са “навън”, а всъщност са “вътре”. Всяка глава, всяко съзнание, както беше казал Набоков, е шлем на космонавт. А какво има под него, е вечната мистерия - никой никого не познава истински, и все пак светът е едно съвсем прилично място, ако му позволим…
От четирите “призрака” на Ия Йенберг - условно ги деля на “формиращата”, “изпитващата”, “съдбовният” и “началото” - най-силно ме докоснаха последните два. В крайна сметка, детайлите за всеки са различни.
——
▶️ Цитати:
🪁 ”Живеем толкова много животи, побрани вътре в нашия живот - по-малки животи с хора, които идват и си отиват, приятели, които изчезват, деца, които порастват, и аз никога не разбирам кой от моите животи всъщност е рамката.”
🪁 “Преди си въобразявах, че извисеното усещане, че си жив, се открива в гората […] или на крайморски скали, загледана в хоризонта, че трябва да изляза сред мълчаливите стихии, за да бъда напълно будна. После обаче се оказа, че всичко вече е тук, в детайлите около мен, че е нужно само по-внимателно вглеждане […]. Там се намира извисеното усещане за живот - в моя буден поглед към другия.”
March 24, 2024
in the midst of a high fever, a bedridden woman reflects on her experiences with 4 people from her past. the novel is made up of intimately written character studies, all so well fleshed out, and through their stories we get a clear sense of why these individuals played such an important role in the narrator’s life. i just loved it.
i wanted to read this book originally because of the translator kira josefsson, who also translated ‘the trio’ by johanna hedman, which was one of my favourite books i read last year - but now it’s also been long-listed for the 2024 international booker! i’ve only read one of the other long-listed titles (lost on me), but i hope this one does well.
rating: 4.5
i wanted to read this book originally because of the translator kira josefsson, who also translated ‘the trio’ by johanna hedman, which was one of my favourite books i read last year - but now it’s also been long-listed for the 2024 international booker! i’ve only read one of the other long-listed titles (lost on me), but i hope this one does well.
rating: 4.5
December 4, 2022
When a woman returns from a trip to the Serengeti and contracts malaria, she recalls key episodes in her life in feverish dreams. The episodes are concentrated around four people who played significant roles in her life. "The details" she remembers comprise some of the best character descriptions I've ever read. When a chapter was finished, I felt like I had known these people myself.
March 12, 2024
Now longlisted for the International Booker Prize - very much deserved!
4,5 – a beautiful, slim Swedish novel, in which a woman recounts her life through portraits of others: a friend, a lover, a roommate, a mother – each of these 4 portrayed in their own section that together make up the 4 chapters of the book. But the real protagonist is the narrator.
What matters are not the chronological, sweeping facts but the details, the interactions, not the ´when´ but the ´who´. It is in fact the details, the acute observations, that make the text so lively, and the novel so good. There is not much plot, but it is about how people are and why they were meaningful – even if the encounters were fleeting and they may have disappeared from the narrator´s life.
This became better and better and I was sad when it finished - very highly recommended. It won the most important Swedish literature prize in 2022 and it would certainly get a place on my International Booker longlist.
4,5 – a beautiful, slim Swedish novel, in which a woman recounts her life through portraits of others: a friend, a lover, a roommate, a mother – each of these 4 portrayed in their own section that together make up the 4 chapters of the book. But the real protagonist is the narrator.
What matters are not the chronological, sweeping facts but the details, the interactions, not the ´when´ but the ´who´. It is in fact the details, the acute observations, that make the text so lively, and the novel so good. There is not much plot, but it is about how people are and why they were meaningful – even if the encounters were fleeting and they may have disappeared from the narrator´s life.
This became better and better and I was sad when it finished - very highly recommended. It won the most important Swedish literature prize in 2022 and it would certainly get a place on my International Booker longlist.
May 4, 2022
Påminner om Rachel Kusk på det sättet att när jag inte läser boken glömmer jag bort den men när jag läser vill jag bara existera i språket. Språket!
Löst hållen roman, skulle kunna varit en novellsamling, om relationer (kärlek, vänskap, föräldrar) och detaljerna runt omkring, som skapar en.
Den avslutade var otrolig.
Löst hållen roman, skulle kunna varit en novellsamling, om relationer (kärlek, vänskap, föräldrar) och detaljerna runt omkring, som skapar en.
Den avslutade var otrolig.
March 26, 2024
Przeciętna konceptualnie i dosyć mierna spójnościowo. Konstrukcja całości jest prosta, choć niełatwa do satysfakcjonującego czytelniczo zrównoważenia: cztery mikroportrety składające się na jeden - portretującej. Spostrzegawcze, raczej pamiętnikarskie niż rozliczeniowe pisanie, bez względu na obecność czynnika autofikcji. Niby z puentą, ale jakoś nieszczególnie wyraźną, rozmytą w ciągu zauważeń. To, co wynika nie równą się temu z czego, a to, co pokazywane zdaje się dominować przekaz. Jak na motyw gorączki za mało mi było tej gorączkowości odtwórczej, odtwarzającej przeszłość w jakimś szalonym, hipochondrycznie gubionym pędzie. Ale okładka wyborna!
May 25, 2024
Quietly gives us a detailed portrait of four important people in the narrator's life and, in so doing, also gives us a picture of the narrator herself.
Are they full portraits? Well, they are certainly detailed, giving life to the people being described, with their ticks and idiosyncrasies. However, a complete picture is never possible. And this impossibility is the underpinning of the whole novel. Genberg subliminally shows that we see people, love people, in 'moments' of time. Some 'times' are longer than others, and some 'times' are more important than others. But these times are just part of the whole never the whole itself. People come into our lives and leave like we ourselves do, but it is the connections, the moments of togetherness, these shared moments of seeing one another, that give meaning to our lives.
"That's all there is to the self, or the so-called "self": traces of the people we rub up against."
Are they full portraits? Well, they are certainly detailed, giving life to the people being described, with their ticks and idiosyncrasies. However, a complete picture is never possible. And this impossibility is the underpinning of the whole novel. Genberg subliminally shows that we see people, love people, in 'moments' of time. Some 'times' are longer than others, and some 'times' are more important than others. But these times are just part of the whole never the whole itself. People come into our lives and leave like we ourselves do, but it is the connections, the moments of togetherness, these shared moments of seeing one another, that give meaning to our lives.
"all that matters are the details, the degree of density, this how and what and everything to do with who."
May 13, 2024
3.5 - 4
This is a short, well-written and translated novel. The main narrator, a woman recovering from illness, looks back at some of her previous relationships, a female lover, a friend, a male lover and lastly, the narrator's mother.
Via those relationships, we assemble a picture of the narrator - a chameleon of sorts, coming across as a passive person, who took her queues from those around her.
This is the kind of introspective, quiet novel that will be interpreted differently by each reader.
The Details was shortlisted for International Booker Prize.
This is a short, well-written and translated novel. The main narrator, a woman recovering from illness, looks back at some of her previous relationships, a female lover, a friend, a male lover and lastly, the narrator's mother.
Via those relationships, we assemble a picture of the narrator - a chameleon of sorts, coming across as a passive person, who took her queues from those around her.
This is the kind of introspective, quiet novel that will be interpreted differently by each reader.
The Details was shortlisted for International Booker Prize.
March 12, 2024
"We live so many lives within our lives—smaller lives with people who come and go, friends who disappear, children who grow up—and I never know which of these lives is meant to serve as the frame."
In her English language debut, Ia Genberg explores what it means to live a meaningful life in a world of chaos and disorder. Told through four vignettes into particular relationships in the unnamed narrator's life—past loves, friends and family—we learn less about the main character as a person of action and more as a person of being.
"As far as the dead are concerned, chronology has no import and all that matters are the details, the degree of density, this how and what and everything to do with who."
In the vein of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, the story is less concerned with narrative propulsion—in fact the narrator seems to reject or counter her partner's constant forward movement—and settles more into the seeing, the observing of everyday life. Of years of her life. Decades. Things once forgotten and remembered in a fevered state. What about a book that lingers on your shelf inscribed by a lost love? Or a dress ripped up the side that recalls a New Year's Eve party from the old millennium? This is the detritus, or perhaps treasures, of a normal life—the details that tell the full story, if any story, any life, is really complete.
I was engaged, first, by her skilled writing and Kira Josefsson's flawless translation. The prose, each thought, flows so seamlessly into the next you can't help but be compelled forward by an otherwise 'mundane' story.
Then, as each chapter unfolds and the narrator brings you into various spheres of her life through these relationships, you get to see a more intimate side of the speaker without every getting the full picture.
My only wish was for it to be a bit longer. Selfishly because I was enjoying it so much I wanted more information, more detail; but also because I felt the story a bit choppy and it was just in the final section I started to feel it fully coming together. I did appreciate and enjoy the ending, though perhaps one extra glimpse into her life through another friendship, or lover, or sibling relationship would have made these stronger for me.
Nonetheless, there's plenty to enjoy here and if you want an autofiction of a woman pondering life and her past while breathing hope rather than despair, this would be a great addition to your shelves.
In her English language debut, Ia Genberg explores what it means to live a meaningful life in a world of chaos and disorder. Told through four vignettes into particular relationships in the unnamed narrator's life—past loves, friends and family—we learn less about the main character as a person of action and more as a person of being.
"As far as the dead are concerned, chronology has no import and all that matters are the details, the degree of density, this how and what and everything to do with who."
In the vein of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, the story is less concerned with narrative propulsion—in fact the narrator seems to reject or counter her partner's constant forward movement—and settles more into the seeing, the observing of everyday life. Of years of her life. Decades. Things once forgotten and remembered in a fevered state. What about a book that lingers on your shelf inscribed by a lost love? Or a dress ripped up the side that recalls a New Year's Eve party from the old millennium? This is the detritus, or perhaps treasures, of a normal life—the details that tell the full story, if any story, any life, is really complete.
I was engaged, first, by her skilled writing and Kira Josefsson's flawless translation. The prose, each thought, flows so seamlessly into the next you can't help but be compelled forward by an otherwise 'mundane' story.
Then, as each chapter unfolds and the narrator brings you into various spheres of her life through these relationships, you get to see a more intimate side of the speaker without every getting the full picture.
My only wish was for it to be a bit longer. Selfishly because I was enjoying it so much I wanted more information, more detail; but also because I felt the story a bit choppy and it was just in the final section I started to feel it fully coming together. I did appreciate and enjoy the ending, though perhaps one extra glimpse into her life through another friendship, or lover, or sibling relationship would have made these stronger for me.
Nonetheless, there's plenty to enjoy here and if you want an autofiction of a woman pondering life and her past while breathing hope rather than despair, this would be a great addition to your shelves.
April 19, 2024
Много кратък роман, само 154 страници, който ме погълна още от първия ред.
Жена, чието име никога не научаваме, изгаря от маларийна треска след престой в Танзания.
Съвсем непреднамерено разгръща “Нюйоркска трагедия” от Пол Остър и там открива непрочетено преди 26 години послание към нея от отдавна изгубена любима. Високата температура изостря чувствителността и към миналото и я тласка да преживее отново ключови взаимоотношения.
Четири души, оставили дълбоки следи у нея, които са си тръгнали от живота и внезапно, без да проумее защо, някои оставили я наранена, други неразбираща или пък озадачена как ще продължи напред без тях. В историите няма нищо необичайно, на всеки от нас, предполагам, се е случвало да не схване защо значимо приятелство или любов са приключили така рязко и непонятно и никога не се е изяснило какво точно се е случило, кое е наклонило везните, дума или поглед или ярко несходство, нещо всъщност ясно и предвидимо от самото начало, или пък съвсем непредвидимо.
Романът ме развълнува на дълбоко лично ниво и ме впечатли със своя професионализъм и премереност. Разказвачката е родена през 60-те години като мен и в начина, по който протича младостта ни, има много сходства: купони със случайно срещнати на случайни места хора, срещи и раздели, опити да разгадаеш другия в неговия забързан порив към едно все още необятно бъдеще, целият хаос и трепет на разтърсващи, за първи път преживявани емоции. Когато разказва как в Стокхолм са се готвели за посрещането на 2001-ва година, си припомних същите апокалиптични предсказания и цялата тържественост, с която очаквахме новото хилядолетие в София. Само че животът ми поднесе най-голямата си изненада, внезапно, почти без никаква подготовка, се озовах в Индия и наченах новия век и това хилядолетие далеч от цялата глъчка, съпровождаща празненствата в Швеция и България. Ето точно толкова бързо, неочаквано и безвъзвратно животът ни може да поеме в необозрима посока, сред напълно различни хора, така както се случва на героите в романа.
Амбициозна радио журналистка, влюбена в книгите, мъж с германско-чилийска кръв, непредсказуем скитник, наркоман, с музиката и танца в кръвта, заможно и дълбоко объркано момиче, също влюбено в книгите, винаги на прага на нервен срив, което мрази семейството си, но все пак успява да се сбогува с майка си 2 дни преди смъртта и и да възневиди и отритне завинаги онази заради която това сбогуване се е осъществило. Това са тримата, които нашата героиня или разказвачка, не знам как точно да я наричам, няма никога вече да види, нито да забрави. Единият от тях ще остави още по-дълбока следа, която няма да ви разкрия. А четвъртият? Още една жена, която ще отпътува, но завинаги, напълно, и която никога и никъде не е присъствала напълно, защото детска травма я е белязала и превърнала в ням и безличен свидетел, в чийто свят не бихме могли да проникнем, дори и да пожелаем.
Най-впечатляващото в тази книга е огромното човеколюбие, което позволява на авторката да съпреживява и да ни придърпа в света на другия, една отвореност, непредубеденост и безусловно приемане. Толкова е широко скроена, че в нито един ред не можем да открием неприемане и осъждане. Бакман казва, че би искал да пише като нея. По топлота може би и е равен, но тук има и една литературна ерудиция и житейска зрялост, които превръщат четенето в съпреживяване и ни отварят към другия. Деликатност и съпричастност към човека в неговата участ отличават книгата и я препоръчвам на любителите на такъв тип литература. Подходът не е напълно иновативен, но определено е нестандартен. Кой е главният герой в това повествование, съставено от детайли от човешки съществования? Дори за разказвачката на тези истории не научаваме много освен неизчерпаемата и отдаденост да проумее другите, да осмисли живота си чрез това сливане, да заличи границите. Преживейте тази книга! Много е изскрена, изживяна, нито следа от претенциозност и експлоатация на трамви или авторски манипулации.
“Живеем толкова много животи, побрани вътре в нашия живот - по-малки животи с хора, които идват и си отиват, приятели, които изчезват, деца, които порастват, и аз никога не разбирам кой от моите животи всъщност е рамката. Когато имам висока температура или съм влюбена, всичко изглежда кристално ясно, моят “аз” потъва надълбоко и освобождава място за едно безименно щастие, една цялост, чиито детайли са запазени в своята пълнота, разграничени и отчетливи едни до други. След това си спомням състоянието като благословия. Може би тъкмо по този начин трябва да се разказва целостта - с хора, които без ред бродят, навътре и навън, през моето лице. Никакво “начало” и никакъв “край”, никаква специална хронология, само миговете и това, което възниква в тях.
“… Преди си въобразявах, че извисеното усещане, че си жив, се открива в гората, че трябва да крача към него между високите борове, да седя сама на пънове, присвила очи срещу слънцето, или на крайморски скали, загледана в хоризонта, че трабва да изляза срещу мълчаливите стихии, за да бъда напълно будна. После обаче се оказа, че всичко вече е тук, в детайлите около мен, че е нужно само по-внимателно вглеждане - тогава мога да оставя себе си и да насоча вниманието си навън, в смисъл наистина навън. Там се намира извисеното усещане за живот - в моя буден поглед към другия.
Романът е в краткия списък за наградата Международен Букър.
#InternationalBooker2024
September 20, 2023
"Детайлите" от Ия Йенбер, е книга, трудна за разказване. Трудна за споделяне с друг, предполагам защото посяга към теми, твърде лични. Теми, от живота на един човек, оформили го като личност.
Това е роман за констатациите (вероятно). За равносметките, които правим. За изводите от грешките, за спомените и тяхната ненарушимост, и най-вече за онези, които влизат в животите ни и оставят отпечатък.
За осмислянето на собствена личност, отразена в съвместните преживявания с другите.
Дълго време пренаписвах ревюто си за тази книга. Предполагам всеки следващ път би изглеждало различно. С част от страниците се носихме в пълен синхрон, към други - изпитвах безумна съпротива.
Но предполагам няма как да бъде иначе. Романът изповядва. През цялото време усещах лирическата героиня много близка. Сякаш приятел ми споделя.
Приятел, повален от треска, който си спомня миналото и има нужда да разкаже за любовите си, за драмите, за превратностите на живота, за травмите, които ни нанася, но и за красивите преживявания, с които ни кара да се чувстваме цели, изпълнени с вълнение, специални.
Това е роман за констатациите (вероятно). За равносметките, които правим. За изводите от грешките, за спомените и тяхната ненарушимост, и най-вече за онези, които влизат в животите ни и оставят отпечатък.
За осмислянето на собствена личност, отразена в съвместните преживявания с другите.
Дълго време пренаписвах ревюто си за тази книга. Предполагам всеки следващ път би изглеждало различно. С част от страниците се носихме в пълен синхрон, към други - изпитвах безумна съпротива.
Но предполагам няма как да бъде иначе. Романът изповядва. През цялото време усещах лирическата героиня много близка. Сякаш приятел ми споделя.
Приятел, повален от треска, който си спомня миналото и има нужда да разкаже за любовите си, за драмите, за превратностите на живота, за травмите, които ни нанася, но и за красивите преживявания, с които ни кара да се чувстваме цели, изпълнени с вълнение, специални.
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