Det gør mig barnligt glad at Financial Times anmelder den engelske oversættelse af ‘Samlade Verk’ samme uge som jeg fik den læst under turen til Stockholm:
Lydia Sandgren’s bestselling debut novel Collected Works won Sweden’s premier book award, the August Prize, in 2020 and arrives in English translation having been lauded by European critics. It’s not hard to see why. Sandgren’s absorbing story — which is no mean feat at nearly 800 pages — revolves around two young men in Gothenburg, from the 1970s and 1980s to the present day. Although there is an inevitable marketing comparison to Karl Ove Knausgaard, the novel is more akin to a witty, toothy, family saga, unashamedly intellectual but rarely bogged down by the weight of its theories.
It’s refreshing to read such a confidently ambitious work that holds art, literature and philosophy close to its heart. The denouement rushes to meet us and is not entirely satisfactory, with too many hastily tied-up loose ends. Nevertheless, Collected Works is an assured, bittersweet novel that, like youth, seems to have it all — energy, aspiration, and self-delusion.
Det er meget rammende. Jeg var opslugt gennem næsten alle de 800 sider, ikke mindst af den centrale enigmatiske karakter Cecilia. Ved endt læsning provokerede den ambivalente slutning mig (vi taler om en sidste scene i familie med The Sopranos’ famøse cut-to-black slutning), men som jeg sad i toget hjem, blev den på forunderlig vis meningsfuld for mig.
Varmt – nærmest rødglødende varmt, faktisk – anbefalet.