The Rock Blaster by Henning Mankell

Published in Sweden in 1973; published in translation by Vintage on February 18, 2020

At some point during The Rock Blaster, the protagonist comments that there should be more books like those by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg, whose “characters were not in any way remarkable. They were like all the others. But you get to see how much happened in their lives.” The Rock Blaster is Henning Mankell’s contribution to the literature of the Everyman.

Oskar Johannes Johansson identifies himself as a worker, what would now be called a manual laborer. Construction work, rock blasting, whatever comes along. “He belongs to a group that he sees as clearly defined and also clearly segregated.” His father and grandfather were workers. He has had “the same life as everyone else. Brutal swings between having work and being laid off.” Much has changed during his life but he feels he has had no part in shaping those changes. “The worker is a member of his community, but the forces driving and changing society are wielded by others.”

The narrator tells Oskar’s story in snippets, focusing on events between 1910 and 1969, with diversions that examine Oskar’s roots and the contemporaries who influenced his life. A defining moment comes in 1910, when Oskar proclaims himself a socialist and is no longer allowed to live at home. Another occurs in 1911, when he miraculously survives an explosion in a rock blasting accident. He loses an eye and has his eyelids sewn together rather than opting for a glass replacement. He loses a hand and prefers a stump to a hook. Near the end of his life he has three teeth but can’t be bothered to buy dentures because what’s the point? Oskar lives with deterioration and loss, accepts it and even embraces it as life taking its natural course.

Oskar is dating Elly before the accident, but she gets pregnant while he is in the hospital. By coincidence, he ends up marrying Elvira, her sister. They have children. He goes back to work as a rock blaster. He loses his job in the depression, gets a new one after unemployment peaks. He becomes a widower. He tries to comfort a friend who is losing his faculties to a degenerative disease. He loves the location of his inner-city apartment but the building gives way to a new housing project, forcing his relocation to a suburb. Later in life he spends summers on an island, in an old sauna that he has converted to a single room dwelling. He spends his last years recalling what it was like to be young and vigorous.

Like a Moberg novel, The Rock Blaster is the story of an ordinary life. Ordinary but not uneventful, in the way that all ordinary lives are assembled from a series of chance events. Oskar struggles and perseveres. He feels stupid and lonely, but he manages those feelings. Like a hundred billion others in human history, he’s here and then he’s not.

The Rock Blaster explores the role of ordinary people in Swedish society, people who have “only been allowed to speak in murmurs, yet they were the ones doing all the fighting and being beaten.” They are the ones who build society and keep it running, yet they are at the bottom of the pyramid, holding it up so that the rich and powerful can reap a disproportionate share of the benefits. Oskar becomes disenchanted with the Social Democrats because they focus on civil servants, creating unnecessary jobs that are given to people who develop a sense of entitlement, leaving workers behind. Oskar remains convinced that a worker’s revolution will one day come, although he is sad to have missed it. At the same time, he always says hello to his neighbors because he knows he is part of something bigger than himself. “Whether you like it or not, you’re part of it. Just spit in the ocean once. Then you have all the eternity you need.”

The Rock Blaster is Mankell’s first novel, the latest to be translated into English. It shows the ambition and unevenness of a first novel. The Everyman theme is too heavy-handed, as if Mankell didn’t trust the reader to understand the point of creating an ordinary character. He makes his points with needless redundancy. Still, the story is an effective reminder that, while we become spellbound by the lives of extraordinary people, ordinary people are the foundation of society. And in a sense, most people are extraordinary. To persevere after losing a hand and an eye is remarkable, but people do it all the time. To care about others, to be curious about the world and to wonder how it can be improved, are qualities of people who are gifted with compassion. The Rock Blaster reminds us that to be ordinary makes us a part of something extraordinary, something that we change and shape in our small way, even if we feel insignificant and powerless.

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The Circus by Jonas Karlsson

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by Hogarth on January 28, 2020

The Circus lies somewhere on the border between surrealistic and realistic. It might best be categorized as a psychological mystery that challenges the reader to decide whether the evidence supplied by the narrator supports the conclusion he has drawn. The plot revolves around the disappearance of a man at a circus — he apparently entered a mirror, and like Alice, left this dimension and entered some secret realm. Or did he?

The narrator is invited to the circus by his friend, Magnus Gabrielsson. They haven’t spoken in a year and the narrator regards their meeting as a social obligation he needs to get out of the way. A circus magician announces that he will make a member of the audience disappear. Magnus volunteers. When the magician directs Magnus to walk behind the mirror, the narrator can see Magnus’ reflection in the mirror but cannot see Magnus. The act ends when the magician removes the mirror. The narrator expects to find Magnus at the intermission but Magnus cannot be found. Nor can he be found in the days that follow. Nor can rumors about his disappearance be confirmed.

We learn that the narrator was a friendless child until he met Magnus. The narrator spent his school hours listening to music on his Walkman (he was more fond of synth than hard rock). When he noticed Magnus hanging around the periphery of the school playground, he struck up a conversation about music. They bonded, although the narrator did most of the talking. Magnus absorbed the narrator’s music lectures, learning as much as possible about the bands Magnus recommended.

At some point, the narrator realizes “there was another life outside the claustrophobic little world Magnus and I constructed.” He imagines himself befriending a popular kid named Dennis until Dennis steals his Walkman. So much for the wider world.

As an adult, the narrator’s only friend is Jallo, who he met at a summer camp. When the narrator tells Jallo about Magnus’ disappearance, Jallo suggests an address the narrator should visit. The narrator is surprised when, after some false starts, he finally visits the correct address, but the surprise brings him no closer to solving the disappearance of Magnus.

Soon after Magnus disappears, the narrator begins to receive telephone calls from someone who never speaks. Is it Magnus? Or perhaps the ghost of Magnus? Music sometimes plays in the background, but is it music that Magnus would play? Sometimes the narrator plays music for the silent caller. Near the novel’s end, they carry on a conversation by playing songs to each other, a conversation that gets its content from the song titles.

All of this is strange but intriguing. Those attributes are the signature of a novel by Jonas Karlsson. Thanks to the narrator’s interaction with Jallo, the reader will come to suspect that the truth behind Magnus’ disappearance is quite different than the narrator believes it to be. Yet the ending suggests that even the explanation that Jallo proposes might not be true. Everything in a Karlsson novel is ambiguous because, well, isn’t life?

Reading a Karlsson novel is like taking a break from reality, or at least from the way we are accustomed to perceiving reality. Karlsson’s novels are always grounded in a philosophical view of existence. This one suggests that the world is a circus (or as Shakespeare suggested, a stage) and life is nothing but an attempt to impose order on chaos. Order is an artificial construct, one of our own devising, an unnatural state but perhaps a necessary one if we are to muddle through a life that only has the meaning we assign to it. Whether or not the reader accepts or rejects that philosophy, fiction that tells an absorbing story while inviting the reader to consider life from a different perspective is always worthwhile. And in the case of a Karlsson novel, it is always entertaining.

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The Watcher by Caroline Eriksson

First published in Sweden in 2017; published in translation by AmazonCrossing on September 18, 2018

The Watcher, like many other thrillers built on domestic drama, is the story of people who seem to be behaving badly. This one is a bit different in that it challenges the reader to decide whether the primary narrator is perceiving and interpreting unfolding events accurately. Unfortunately, the novel’s resolution is not as interesting as its setup.

Elena is the author of a successful thriller who hasn’t written a word in two years. She is separated from her husband Peter and spends her time moping and gazing out the window rather than living, although she tells us that she’s always been more an observer of life than a participant. Most of the novel is narrated from Elena’s point of view, although some chapters are told from the perspective of an unfaithful husband and some from the point of view of a woman who plans to kill her husband.

Considering how much drama she has in her own life, it can’t be healthy for Elena to take on another family’s drama. Yet alone in her home, Elena becomes obsessed with the neighbors across the street who seem to be having (to put it gently) domestic problems. Through Google, she learns that they are Philip and Veronica Storm. She soon meets their son, a young teen named Leo, who wants to be a writer. Leo seems eager to strike up a friendship and Elena, listening to his stories about his parents, seems to sense a source of material she can use to make her own stories.

Elena’s curiosity and snooping — where does Leo’s mother go during the days when she’s supposedly lying in bed? what is Leo's father saying to the woman he's apparently meeting on the sly? why is there a knife under the Storms' marital bed? — leads her to fear that something bad will happen. Can she do anything to prevent it? Should she do anything, given that her suspicions may be unfounded and, in any event, result from invading the privacy of Leo’s family? She fears, with good reason, that anyone to whom she voices her suspicion will question her mental health. The reader might do the same when Elena starts to wonder whether the novel she is writing is in some way influencing the actions of her neighbors.

One of the novel’s pleasures, in fact, is the challenge that the reader faces in deciding whether Elena is just too unbalanced to have a reliable perception of events. Maybe someone is in danger. Maybe Elena is imagining the danger, creating a greater drama than the evidence supports. Caroline Eriksson builds suspicion that the danger might not involve Philip or Veronica but a secondary character, like Peter or Elena’s sister, both of whom play tangential roles for much of the story.

While most of the novel is told from Elena’s perspective, occasional passages are narrated by two unnamed characters. Again, the reader makes assumptions about who those narrators might be, but those assumptions must be reconsidered as the story progresses. Eriksson’s deft misdirection and her reliance on a potentially unreliable narrator are the novel’s virtues.

At the same time, while the novel builds to a surprising moment, the ending seems a bit tame, given the dramatic buildup. My reaction was more “huh” than “wow.” The final pages are determinedly optimistic, as if Eriksson thought it was important to let the reader know that Elena is a strong woman and that there’s no need to worry about another critical character. That seems like a betrayal of the darkness the precedes those pages. There’s also a message in the final paragraph that comes across as a writer force-feeding a dish of self-help to the reader. So while The Watcher has its rewards, it also comes with a bit of disappointment at the end.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Zack by Mons Kallentoft and Markus Lutteman

First published in Sweden in 2014; published in translation by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on January 23, 2018

Zack Herry is a humble Detective Inspector in Sweden with a wealthy girlfriend whose father he saved from a robbery. Zack has moved ahead of older officers to land a gig in the Special Crimes Unit. At night, he likes to party with his friend Abdula, who supplies the cocaine. Zack is a little worried that his colleagues might be tumbling to his nocturnal activities. But when he’s sleeping rather than partying, he has nightmares about his mother, a police detective whose murder was never solved.

Zack puts those worries aside as he investigates the killings and mutilations of some Thai prostitutes who worked in a massage parlor. That gives Mons Kallentoft a chance to spotlight Sweden’s hate-spewing white supremacists, who seem to have particular disdain for Thai women. One of the police detectives wonders whether there has always been so much hate, or whether the internet has amplified the voice of racists. It’s a good question.

But white supremacists aren’t the only suspects. A motorcycle gang may have committed the murders to send a message about who controls the supply of Thai prostitutes in Sweden. A profiler suspects that a loner with a grudge against women is responsible. Turkish gangsters may also be responsible.

Meanwhile, Sukayana Prikon, who owns the massage parlor where the murdered women worked, is kidnapped. The reader joins Zack in wondering why she is subjected to some brutal moments that are left to play out in the reader’s imagination.

The various plotlines come together in a central mystery: Who is killing the prostitutes, and why? But a closely-related mystery is just as engrossing: Will Zack solve the murders before he gets fired?

Zack engages in the requisite chases, shootouts, and fights, but he’s also an interesting, deeply conflicted character. People tell him that he’s a good person because he’s on the side of good people, but he feels no remorse when he kills bad people. That troubles him, so maybe he is a good person. Zack knows he has a drug problem, he knows it is impairing his judgment and jeopardizing a job, but like most people with a drug problem, he’s losing control of his ability to contain the consequences of his addiction. That can be a trite trait if an author uses addiction in an obvious effort to make a character seem realistic or interesting, but Zack’s addiction is integral to his being — and that, in turn, makes the character both interesting and realistic. The fact that his mother was murdered and that he became a cop to find her killer adds another dimension to his character.

Secondary characters, including a blind detective named Rudolph, the unfortunate massage parlor owner, and a lesbian detective who partners with Zack (and unlike most women, readily resists his charms) are developed to a satisfying degree of depth. The solution to the mystery isn’t particularly noteworthy, but the cinematic style of storytelling makes the action easy to visualize (perhaps too easy for sensitive readers who don’t want to picture wolves devouring the legs of dangling humans). The novel’s steady pace turns into a sprint as the novel nears its end. The theme of human trafficking is trendy and overdone in modern thrillers, but I’ll forgive Kallentoft since I’m happy to read any Scandinavian thriller that doesn’t dwell on snow and frigid weather and how depressing it is to be alive.

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The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson

Published in Sweden in 2011; published in translation by Hogarth on July 12, 2016

If Kafka had a sense of humor, if he had been less dark and gloomy, he might have written The Invoice. The novel imagines a scenario in which irrational rules are imposed and people have no choice but to follow them without understanding why. But unlike Kafka’s Josef K, the bureaucrats in The Invoice are only too happy to explain his obligations to the novel’s narrator, although in terms he can’t possibly understand. Of course, every time the narrator meets with the bureaucrats, his efforts to make things better only worsen his predicament.

The Invoice is Jonas Karlsson’s latest contribution to the field of absurdist literature, following The Room. While The Room is darkly amusing, The Invoice is brightly amusing. It is a novel that reminds us to value all the small things that make us happy, notwithstanding the bureaucrats who make a mission of impeding joy.

The unnamed narrator of The Invoice receives a bill for 5.7 million kroner. He doesn’t know what the bill is for, but he is confident that he didn’t incur the debt. He also knows he doesn’t have 5.7 million kroner. After he gets a second bill, he calls the number on the invoice and after a long wait, speaks to a live person who tells him that he is being billed for the experiences that have made him happy. It seems as if Sweden has a happiness tax, although it’s actually being implemented worldwide. An interesting idea, although in the United States an anger tax would probably generate more revenue.

The narrator’s problem is that he isn’t angry often enough, and so has incurred a huge debt for the things (like sunshine) that make him happy. With a job in a video rental store and no girlfriend, it doesn’t seem as though he should have accrued such a large debt. He’s so desperate for female companionship, in fact, that he develops a crush on the administrator he keeps phoning to discuss his inability to pay the debt. One of the novel’s points, I think, is that it’s possible to make a connection with another person under even the most unlikely circumstances.

Like The Room, The Invoice pokes fun at cabined, bureaucratic thinking. But it also sends a life-affirming message. The narrator really doesn’t realize he’s happy, even denies that he’s happy, because he has chosen not to take advantage of opportunities to be happy. He is a slave to habitual behavior. He lacks the spontaneity to seize the moment. He goes with the flow. He envies people who have the ability to “look after themselves and sort things out.” Forced to think about his easy, uneventful life, he concludes “it’s pretty damn tragic.”

At the same time, it is exactly those traits that have caused his tax debt to mount. He doesn’t crave money. He doesn’t care that he has a dead-end job. He doesn’t worry that he has too few friends. He came through a break-up without feeling bad about himself. He’s content when he eats a combination of mint chocolate and raspberry ice cream, when he breathes in the mild summer air. To other Swedes, the narrator might seem dull and unambitious, but The Invoice seems to suggest that those traits are worth cultivating if they help us appreciate the joy of life’s simplest pleasures.

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