Literary Stockholm, part 7: Winter Bay

Read the background for this blog series.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

I remember well when Vinterviken (“Winter bay”) was published in 1993. Mats Wahl was by then a well-known YA writer, particularly for his historical novels Husbonden (“The master”) and Anna-Carolinas krig (“Anna-Carolina's war”), the latter one of several cross-dressing novels that appeared at the same time. Vinterviken was, however, different: focusing on contemporary Swedish society. We were all entranced by it; the reviews were overwhelming, and it won the August Prize for the best children's or YA book of the year. I have written about it, and I taught it on many occasions.

As with the other books I am reading for this challenge, I tried to dig into my memories before re-reading. I remembered the main character and his dilemma, I remembered romance across class and race borders (race issues were not as prominent in Sweden at that time as today), and I remembered crime and violence. What I remembered most of all was the narrative voice. First-person, present tense – it has become so common there days in YA fiction that it is trivial, but it wasn't that usual.

What I had completely forgotten are details that are of overall importance: the fact that the main character attends a drama school and a boxing class, the way he meets the upper-class girl when he saves her little sister from drowning, the conflict with the stepfather (not too original), and a confrontation with a neo-nazi gang.

I had forgotten how unsympathetic, not to say abominable, the main character was. I did remember that he and his friend break and enter, but I did not remember that he also commits other small and big crimes, without slightest regret. I guess I was seduced by the narrative voice, as the reader of course is supposed to be; I fell into identification trap that I have warned so often in my research; I aligned with the underdog ignoring his depravity. But it turned out that I also misremembered the narrative perspective. I must have confused it with a different novel. My sense was that the unreliable narrator “forgets” to mention that he is mixed-race and that it comes as a surprise toward the end, explaining in retrospect some of his behaviour. This is why I reacted so strongly to the cover of my edition, taken from the film adaptation that I also reacted strongly to when it first came: revealing in advance something that the narrator omits. However, this decisive fact is disclosed from start, as John-John is abused and bullied by a gang of neo-nazis, who continue to chase him throughout the plot. And John-John's dreams about his African-American father would not make sense unless we already knew that he was mixed-race. I remembered the dreams, so how these circumstances could be reconciled in my memory I don't understand.

What I remembered correctly though was that being mixed-race is not John-John's dilemma, it's just a part of who he is, and that was what I liked when I first read the novel. His dilemma is class, not race, and in the context the intersection is negligible.

I did not remember that his upper-class girlfriend hits and almost kills his criminal stepfather in self-defence. So she is not precisely an angel either. I did not remember that the stepfather sleeps with his sister, on consent, and the mother does not object. I did not remember that the best friend gets involved with neo-nazis and then asks John-John to help him escape from them.

I did not remember the ending at all so I was kept in suspense about how all these conflicts would be resolved. On re-reading, I wonder why I wasn't disappointed when – skip this if you don't want a spoiler – the enemies conveniently drown in the ice-covered Winter Bay (so the novel starts and ends with drowning). However, while I didn't remember it before reading, I now recall that I was pleased - another spoiler - with the lovers reunited because it was the first Swedish YA novel in many years where the protagonist wasn't killed or committed suicide. I welcomed the happy ending as refreshing. I don't now. I don't find it persuasive.

In short, my memory of the novel was not merely fragmented and distorted, it was next to non-existent. And I have written about it and taught it!

Finally, I had forgotten how badly it was written. Again, I think reviewers, scholars and August jury were enticed by the subject, the voice – and after all, it was perhaps the best book of the year and even decade, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was good.

I am glad I have re-read it and will from now on not misrepresent it in conversations with colleagues. It is also a perfect example of a book that has definitely not survived the trial of time.

Mats Wahl's literary sign is appropriately by Vinterviken in the Western suburb of Stockholm. It is behind bars because of road construction.

ABC blog, bonus post: Å

For previous entries, click A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X Y Z

Although I promised that the Z post would be the last, I cannot refrain from bonus posts based on the final letters of the Swedish alphabet. I promise solemnly that I won't continue with Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew or Futhark, although it is tempting.

Å is for ångest, which in Swedish means ”anxiety” or ”anguish” and is sometimes referred to with its German equivalent ”Angst”. For some reason, English-speaking people, who are generally hostile toward all things alien, love German philosophical terms such as Angst or Dasein. I think it is just translators being lazy.

Anxiety is omnipresent in young adult literature because being an adolescent is one huge uncertainty. Too late to go back to childhood, but not quite adult yet. Although apparently there is a new kind of literature now, NewAdult (NA) literature which, as far as I can see, is devoid of anxiety. 

Book of the week: A Monster Calls

I started reading this highly appraised book yesterday as I went to bed, and after ten pages I wanted to put it away. Every single cliche was in it: a lonely, insecure protagonist bullied in school, an absent father with his new wife and baby, a sick mother, a busybody granny, an inconsiderate teacher, italics for the voice of the inner monster, and, well, the eponymous monster. I immediately thought about an award-winning and absolutely horrible Swedish young adult novel with almost identical initial set-up, that mostly renders the female protagonist's worries about getting rid of her virginity and finding ways of getting drunk on Fridays. Every now and then she visits her dying mother in hospital. I just couldn't stand another of these novels.

However, some of my students had read the book and said it was wonderful. (Not that I trust students' opinions, but I try at least to be informed about their likes and dislikes). So I gave it a chance. Then I couldn't put the book away and kept reading until well after midnight.

There are many children's and YA novels about "coping with death". I am generally not interested in the aboutness of literature, and I am definitely not interested in how to use books for therapeutic purposes. This book is the most profound narrative of denial and reconciliation I have read.

“Based on a true story...”

A friend gave me a book that she thought I should read. I am always grateful for reading suggestions because there are too many books our there, impossible to keep track of. It isn't a well-written book in my humble opinion, but I am glad I have read it because it will certainly get a lot of attention and likely to win awards because of its subject matter. Between Shades of Gray is the first novel by the American writer Ruta Sepetys, of Lithuanian origin, and it is a story (“based on first-hand family accounts and memories”, the back cover informs) about the deportation of Lithuanians after the Soviet occupation in 1939. For someone who has read a least some Holocaust literature, including children's literature, the gruesome details are not particularly shocking. For someone who has read books about Soviet labour camps, nothing is particularly new, and with all the horror and misery, the story is relatively idyllic. For someone like me, who learned the words “deportation” and “labour camp” among the very first, much is recognisable from family history: my great-grandfather, too, was thrown out of a cattle car when he died under transport. And yes, it is true that you could be shot if you stole a beet.

The writer has obviously done some serious research, visiting Lithuania and collecting evidence about the events she describes through the eyes of a fifteen-year-old. Since it is a book of fiction, she is not telling a story about any individual, but a collective story of a nation among other nations, and it is quite natural that in a novel everything is deliberately amplified and many stories brought together. Sepetys has got almost everything right. But it is this tiny “almost” that spoils the book for me.

It is, for instance, highly unlikely that a deportee would be allowed to keep a sketch pad and pencils, not to mention a fountain pen. This is one of the premisses of the plot, and I can accept it as poetic licence; however, the metaphor might have been stronger if the protagonist's drawings were imaginary rather than material. A deportee would definitely not be allowed to keep a Bible, which was forbidden under the Soviet regime even outside the penitentiary system.

When the Lithuanian are taken from a Siberian railway station to a labour camp, the truck stops in the middle of nothing, and the deportees are ordered into a building to take a shower. This is a poignant scene reflecting the humiliation of the female prisoners who must undress in front of the male guards. Apparently, Sepetys cannot imagine that in the region she depicts there is still no running water today, seventy years later. Sepetys describes in great detail the squalor of the local population, so where would a shower come from in the desolate Siberian steppes? (Showers are generally not a feature of Russia).

As they settle in the camp, some deportees write letters to surviving relatives and friends in Lithuania – and get replies. Lithuania is now under Nazi occupation; there is no way a letter from a Soviet prison camp would be delivered, and no letter “with Lithuanian stamps” would ever reach Siberia. The truth about totalitarian regimes is so unfathomable that no research helps you to comprehend it.

I would really like to believe that Sepetys has done her research properly, but there are too many gaps between her informants' evidence that she fills inadequately. The final drop comes when the protagonist gets a book for her sixteenth birthday. Well, by some serendipity a pretty, hardbound book with golden lettering might have found its way into a Siberian village. The protagonist is thrilled, because it is a book by her favourite author, Dickens, and a title she has not read, Dombey and Son. Then she opens the book and is utterly disappointed: the book is in Russian, which she cannot read. So how could she read the name of the author and the title? Shouldn't a writer who sets her story in Russia know that Russian language uses a different alphabet?

You may think it doesn't matter in a story of unimaginable suffering, and most readers will never notice. But if a writer decides to “tell ye your children...” she has to be credible all the way through.

Book of the week

It has been a while since I read a Swedish young adult novel. It's hard to keep pace with Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, British, American, Australian, picturebooks, chapter books, YA books, so once again, I am dependent on friends' and colleagues' recommendations. Or, as it happened two weeks ago, on meeting an author. A real, flesh-and-blood author (not one of those implied authors whom I meet all the time). An author who can also talk about his books and read from them so that you really feel that this is one book you cannot miss. This happened when I listened to Stefan Casta in Stavanger. I know Stefan well, we have worked in the ALMA jury together. I have read some of his books, and they are excellent. I got very curious about his new book that he talked about at the conference, and now I have read it. Den gröna cirkeln. The green circle.

I am hard to please. I am hard to move. I have read dozens of YA dystopias. I was suspicious the moment I realised it was a dystopia. "Not another one!" And then I couldn't put it aside. And I don't care that it is a mix of dystopia, mystery, horror and teen romance, and if you say you've read that, and that you've read first-person crossvocalised narratives with interspersed film script, and you've read metafiction, and you've read books with eco-messages, and it all has been done thousands of times - yes, but I don't care. I didn't read this book, as I often read YA books, to write a review or include in my research. I read it as an average reader, if there is such a thing. Therefore I cannot explain its magic. I just cannot explain why this book is brilliant when dozens of other books, with similar plots and characters and themes and style, are not. This is not like me, but I have run out of words. Thank you, Stefan!

Two books of two weeks

I have now read two more YA books that Marilyn recommended at the conference last month and that I am sure I would never have discovered on my own. In fact, both covers would have efficiently put me off, even though I see how they might be attractive for the target audience.

After I had read a page and a half of Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, I knew I would enjoy every page of it, no matter the subject. It was so beautifully written. And the subject is still darker than Forbidden. The book starts with incest and rape, and you just wonder where it can go from there. Yet there is no explicit language; but it is told in a way that makes you understand what is happening and how abominable it is. Multiple narrators and multiple perspective, and you never quite know who is speaking. Many intertwined stories to keep track of. Subtle boundaries between dream and reality (and the reality itself is unreal), ambivalent human-animal metamorphosis, and all the time you think: all right, this is the ending, what is going to happen on the remaining 200 pages? And, when you have reconciled with the idea that the ultimate ending will be conventional, everything is suddenly put upside down again. A book full of surprises. A book full of allusions. A masterpiece all the way through.

Kevin Brooks' iBoy also starts with rape. I don't mind as long as it is not “a book about rape”, which it isn't. Actually its aboutness (fascinating jargon, isn't it) is irrelevant. But it is of being human, in the best sense of the notion. Crafted skilfully as a thriller – I literally couldn't put it away, kept reading well beyond midnight, which is exceptionally rare with me. Making use of something indispensible for today's young readers (three years from now, its sci-fi premise may either feel outdated or a horrifying truth). Posing all the BIG questions recognisable from YA fiction, but in a new angle. The question that kept coming to me was: How is the author going to manage the ending? I was disappointed because it was too neat for the unendurable tension of the story. Yes, I know all about not leaving young readers without hope, but it felt too easy. The BIG questions are not resolved.

Still, reading two excellent books within two weeks is more than I can remember.

Book of the week

At my conference, I asked the amazingly knowledgeable Marilyn from the Norfolk Children's Books Centre to recommend five best recent books. This is the only way to keep up with the hundreds of new books published every year: ask colleagues. I used to do it every time I came to the UK: ask a colleague for a list of five best books, and then go to a large bookshop and ask for the five most popular books. This way I always ended up with ten books. Once I came home with a book called The Northern Lights. I think it became quite famous later.

Marilyn chose five books reflecting the theme of the conference, adolescent novel, among then Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma. I must admit that I have never read anything by this author. I read 94 of the 417 pages before going to sleep yesterday. (Isn't it revealing that I can read a hundred pages of an adolescent novel in about the same time it takes me to read ten pages of The Magic Mountain or Moby-Dick). On these pages I have encountered so many clichees that I wonder whether the author is trying to win a competition in how much banality you can squeeze into a novel. Dysfunctional family. Absent father. Alcoholic mother who sleeps with every male she can get hold of. Half-autistic teenager with straight As in all subjects. Bullying classmates and stupid teachers. Have you read this before? I have. The back cover promises that the brother and sister fall in love with each other. I have read it before too, about fifteen years ago first time. I am a bit curious how explicit the incest is. It can be portrayed beautifully or disgustingly. But I wonder whether I want to go on reading. It's so profoundly poorly written. What do you give me for "stellar constellations"? There are two first-person narrators, and the alternating chapters are marked with their names, in case the reader doesn't notice. Although, it would be easy not to notice, because there is no difference whatsoever between the voices. I have read it before as well.

This is in no way a criticism of Marilyn. She didn't say it was a good book. She said it was an interesting book. It is my professional duty to read interesting books even when they are bad. It does not happen often that I don't read a book to the end, but I have been doing it more and more often recently. Life is much too short to waste your time on bad books.