Anna Jörgensdotter

For those of you with the patience to even read my reviews of books not translated into English, you probably know I adore the Swedish writer Sara Lidman. So does, without a doubt, Anna Jörgensdotter. And while this is indeed among the finest influences a realistic writer can flaunt in my book, this book is not at that level. Which is indeed not to say this fine award-winning epic is not a very good read.

Following a working class family of five siblings from 1938 to 1958, Jörgensdotter’s book paints a broad mural of life in industrial Sandviken. Much of it is stuff we’ve seen before: the workers’ organization, the longing for elevation and a life less mundane, the first steps of the Scandinavian welfare state, the closet Nazism, the first TV sets and so on. But Jörgendotter, like Lidman, is always prepared to linger, to look at even the smallest character in a sharp but tender light. In a way, these 455 pages feel like a long row of short stories, digging deep into a large cast of characters. A boy builds a skiing slope to cope with the death of his secret mistress. A man cannot stop blaming his infant daughter for his new wife’s death at childbirth. A young woman is wrestling with her boss making advances. And a woman desperately wants her foster daughter to think about her as her mom.

Jörgensdotter has a literary style, but it’s never hard to penetrate. I especially like her way of writing dialogue that never happens – all those talks we play out in our heads but never actually go into. More often than not, this is a heartbreaking book, in all it’s unspoken longing and numbness. I’ll keep an eye out for coming work by this writer.… (mehr)