Ia GenbergReseñas

Reason read: TIOLI#7, this book was on the short list for the International Booker but did not win. It was written by Swedish author and translated to the English by Kira Josefsson (2023). It is the story of a woman who experiences a high fever and in her fever dream she visits important relationships in her life. It was okay but not particularly compelling. In my opinion it was not a winner but I haven't read any of the others so my opinion is irrelevant.

Everyone has people, places and things that can evoke persistent memories. Various things can be triggers. In the case of Genberg’s unnamed narrator, the triggers are fever and a novel by the recently deceased Paul Auster. While perusing this novel, she begins to meditate on four relationships in her life. Using this structure, Genberg writes a novel that not only provides four intriguing portraits, but also evokes the kind of random, non-linear internal narrative that meditators often experience. “That’s all there is to the self, or the so-called ‘self’:” she muses in a decidedly Buddhist sentiment, “traces of the people we rub against.”

There is little in the way of earth-shaking suspense or plot here. Instead, the four portraits focus on minutia. In effect, Genberg provides the details, as her title suggests. These characters are not simple and their connections to the narrator carry considerable pain. Yet, each character also conjures levels of complexity that reveal their humanity. Clearly, they are the kind of people one tends not to forget.

Johanna was a generous and encouraging colleague in journalism. Nonetheless, she also could be cold and judgmental. Success was paramount for her. Her striving culminated in a career as a famous TV hostess. (Life) “was lived in one direction—forward.” The protagonist observes. “It’s how we differed from one another: I rarely completed anything big.” In the end, the narrator clearly felt betrayed by Johanna.

Niki was the narrator’s soulmate in her youth. She had the endearing quality of being passionate about books. She especially liked owning them. However, one senses that she was not particularly intellectual. Instead, she evinced traits that would characterize her as childish and self-involved—a less-than-ideal roommate. Niki was estranged from her wealthy parents, lacked a need for order or cleanliness, and could be moody or unpredictable. One might predict that this relationship could not end well. In fact, Niki just disappeared one day without a farewell or any forwarding contact information. A sense of abandonment pervades this memory.

Alejandro was a charismatic dancer, with whom the narrator had a brief but intense romantic relationship. He fathered her first child. He felt that the Swedish lifestyle was too confining and comfortable. He left seeking greater challenges. Though transitory, this connection was the most satisfying of the four for the narrator. She measures all of the other relationships against this one.

Her mother, Birgitte, was the narrator’s most painful memory because it is filled with regret. A childhood trauma left her mother adrift and clinging to rituals. She could be outspoken around others, but barely talked to her daughter. Understandably, this history left the narrator incapable of building trust in her own relationships.

Though brief, THE DETAILS provides important insights into what constitutes rewarding relationships. Notably, these are not always without suffering. Indeed, painful memories may be the most enduring.

A very well written book, exceptional. A number of reviews describe this work as a fever dream, and that is indeed how it is set up and starts off, but it is not like a fever dream at all. The stories of the narrator’s past are detailed and structured, and full of her thoughts and feelings during the windows described- nothing at all feverish. They are sensitive and detailed, and brimming with the narrator’s pensive thoughts on others, and her own struggle to find her voice in her writing. The stories from the past are mostly in her 20’s, maybe early 30’s, and drinking, drugs, sex and writing are the azimuths of her life (with a little cleaning thrown in). It is fascinating and intimate getting to share her thoughts and views, and I whipped through it in a couple of evenings. If the fever dreams are an element, I guess they brought up key players in the dreamer’s life, but their parts are described post-fever by a lucid and crystal clear mind.
The final story is a significant break, and is about a different character, Birgitte, and how that character impacted her life and who she is. Spoiler, the rape of Birgitte as a child and its multi-generational impact are the central elements. Though touching, like the other parts of the novel, this didn’t quite fit with the rest of the tale, as good as it is on its own.

I’ll miss sharing the narrator’s thoughts now that it is done…

A woman is remembering people and events from her past. Each chapter is about a specific individual and how the narrator relates to them. Other chapter leads may appear as minor characters in other chapters.

This was interesting, but I felt it could have been great. I found the chapters became more interesting as the book went on--the later chapters (especially the last) illuminated more about the earlier chapters and why the narrator behaved as she had.

The unnamed narrator of this novel is a middle aged woman who is experiencing an illness with high fevers and fatigue, which confines her to bed for several days. In the midst of her illness she recalls and revisits Paul Auster's [The New York Trilogy], which was given to her by Johanna, a lover from her past who has found fame as a well known radio broadcaster. The book consists of four characters who have been integral to the life of the narrator: Niki, her roommate in college, who the narrator attempted to befriend while being repeatedly ignored and pushed away; Alejandro, a lover who was a member of a local rock band; and Birgitte, her mother, who had to overcome her own demons after the birth of her children. Each character is somewhat inscrutable in her or his own way, although the narrator’s life was greatly impacted by each of them.

I found "The Details" to be a lovely novel to read, but its ethereal nature and structure means that it neither it nor its characters will stay with me long, and I would be very surprised if it wins the International Booker Prize.

17. The Details by Ia Genberg
translation: from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (2023)
OPD: 2022
format: 137-page hardcover
acquired: library loan read: Mar 29-30 time reading: 3:36, 1.6 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Stockholm (1990’s)
about the author: Swedish journalist and novelist born in Stockholm in 1967.

I just finished, my second of the International Booker longlist, another super-short one. I enjoyed it.

The novel is broken into four parts, each a relationship. They read like autobiographical essays about the quirky offbeat artistic world of 1990's Stockholm, Sweden. The four relationships include lovers, friends, and the unnamed narrator's mother. The opening two sections, two relationships, reminded me a lot of Rachel Cusk. Bold, personal, just a little off, but always interesting, the narrator here literally writing in a fever. That sense changed or faded at the end of the Niki section, the second, where I felt the book took a turn, and the four parts became to me a lot more meaningful and cohesive.

There is a lot of searching and not finding, just searching and searching elsewhere, and some losing. She tell us, "All my writing efforts were a vain attempt to reach for something that was forever lost." It’s a messy, unstructured, unstable life, but a tolerant one. She gives lots of details, per the title, things and personal characteristics, but they are part of the narrative. She tells us she has a "melancholic eye for detail". Often, they just seem to mainly tell the reader to slow down and look around.

I enjoyed these characters and their relationships, and their ongoing conversations that never end. They live, they're individual, wonderfully tangible and also unreachable. A fun book. It's maybe too short, and maybe reads too fast. I had to make myself slow down. Recommended to the whimsical reader.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8488118

The Details is very much a thoughtful, ruminative book about a woman coming to terms with her past. There are no hugely dramatic reveals or scenes; instead the unnamed narrator focuses on describing four characters who played pivotal roles in her life. This allows her to build both a portrait of the person as she saw them and to assess them at a remove years later.

I was not surprised to find out that Ia Genberg was born around the same time I was, based on the many Gen X touchstones mentioned by the narrator. So many people my age could recount similar memories of the rock-band boyfriend, the punkish best friend rebelling against a middle-class background, the parent distracted by her own past experiences, the frenzy over the arrival of the year 2000. The book is aptly titled. Genberg excels at providing small details that add up to a vivid characterization, so when the reader arrives at the revelation of the effect on the narrator, it feels natural and earned. Genberg's writing is gently lovely, a quiet surface that both hides and reveals deep emotions underneath. I especially appreciated her use of literary references, even though some of the authors she referenced don't seem to be available in English translation, unfortunately. I wish I could read them! I will definitely look for more work by Ia Genberg.½

Quarante ans dans la vie d’une femme, la narratrice, ses amours, ses amitiés, ses errances. Un roman sous forme de monologue intérieur en quatre époques, représentées par quatre personnes qui les ont marquées. Un texte déroutant mais brillant, introspectif, attaché aux détails de l’existence et des sentiments, et aux accents générationnels.

Nadat ik een paar dagen met het virus in mijn lijf heb rondgelopen krijg ik koorts en kom ik op het idee een speciale roman te herlezen, maar pas als ik in bed ga zitten en het boek opensla, begrijp ik waarom.

Gentle, thoughtful and reflective.
As you would expect from the title, the narrator's descriptions of four individuals who have been an impact on the narrator's life slowly unspool themselves.
Perhaps I wasn't paying sufficient attention, as although this book was well written/translated, the book was too emotionally distant, too detached and too tangential. There are paragraphs that suddenly spell out, perhaps, the author's thoughts or concerns, but they didn't feel organic, but inserted.
Moody and atmospheric though, and it slowed me down.

058 [The Details] by [[Ia Genberg]] (tr. [[Kira Josefsson]])

Rating: 4* of five, rounded up from three-an-a-half for the pleasure of its company

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!

Lovely book both with regards to the story and the language. A book with few pages but nevertheless a page turner.

La narradora ens parla de quatre persones que han tingut a veure en la seva vida. Explicat amb molts detalls no cau en l'avorriment, tot el contrari

Tämä sopi mainiosti välipalaksi kun oli tarve lyhyehkölle äänikirjalle. En tiedä sopiko lukija tähän erityisen hyvin; vaikka Manton ääni on miellyttävä, ajattelin päähenkilön olevan nuorempi ja se vähän häiritsi. Vika on varmaan kyllä kuulijassa, koska tiedänkö edes minkä ikäinen kertoja on? Taajunnanvirtamainen kerronta ja välähdykset elämästä eivät vaadi erityistä kokonaisuuden hahmottamisen kykyä, ja siksi kirja sopi tähän tilanteeseen ja tässä muodossa erinomaisesti.

De details. Door: Ia Genberg.

Aan de hand van 4 portretten: Johanna (partner), Niki (vriendin), Alejandro (een grote liefde) en Brigitte krijgen we zicht op de vrouw die deze portretten schreef.

Het knappe aan dit boek is dat je door 4 korte portretten en heel goed beeld krijgt van de beschreven personen maar ook van de beschrijver. Je volgt haar voor een groot stuk van haar leven. Je ziet hoe ze gevormd wordt door de keuzes die ze maakt, de dingen die ze opgeeft, de mensen die ze in haar leven toelaat.

Genberg schrijft gedetailleerd en vaag tegelijk. Ze blijft op afstand maar dringt soms toch diep door. Ze toont ons lezers hoe een leven (ook dat van ons) gevormd wordt door de beslissingen die we nemen, de kansen die we laten gaan. Dat de mensen om ons heen voor een groot stuk niet enkel ons leven maar ook onze persoonlijkheid vormgeven.

Boeiend om over na te denken: wie zij de vier mensen die jou gevormd hebben? Boeken die me doen mijmeren over mijn eigen leven: ik hou ervan.