THE DETAILS, malarial dreams of Love, Swedish Style

THE DETAILS
IA GENBERG (tr. Kira Josefsson)
HarperVia
$22.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ecru silk damask, if it were a novel.

Fine sentences, trenchant observations, but all a bit samey. The nature of Love is, I guess, pretty much to be variations on a theme for most all of us. Like the damask I opened with, it's details that change not the shape of the central concerns of the lover. Her apparent life-long bisexuality simply is, from beginning to end; there's zero mention of coming out, except a tiny nod at the very end when her father's calm reaction to it in the past gets a sentence fragment. Nor is there a single soul whose response to her bisxeuality is...well, to be honest, even present.

This being the way I think things should be, I got no kick with that.

What doesn't excite me then? I have the sneaking suspicion that there's not more than meets the eye here, that the meanings are all present and accounted for, that one's meant to be exactly where we're left. I'm perfectly ready to stipulate that this could be my failure to dig deeper. Honestly the prose and the story don't invite me to do so...Nor do I, a lifelong US citizen, feel I'm led to see and feel the map coordinates throughout the text. Because I'm not Swedish nor am I familiar with them, the towns and neighborhoods of Stockholm that are named gave me no extra information, no deepened shadows or illuminated spots from their mentions.

The events of her life of love coming to her as fragments in a malarial fever gets little enough play that I never had a chance to develop a response to it. It's merely a framing device and no more. I found that to be a good thing because it didn't require a lot to use it effectively. Mentions here and there. No more than might occur in a letter one sends to a friend recalling shared moments from the past.

If your present mood calls for something meditative, something thoughtful without being stressful, here's a short, pleasant trip to Sweden with an honest hearted companion. Let her tell you some of her secrets. Your day might be enriched even more than mine was by my bisexual sibling. One small tic in the corner of my eye was caused by Alejandro,in the blurb above, campaigning for the narrator to have a baby with him. It is Kristian, whom Alejandro displaced in the narrtor's love, that wanted to have babies with the narrator. *tsk* on the copywriter!