Book Review

By Derryll White

Alvtegan, Karin (2007).  Shadow.

Karin Alvtegan is one of the best writers of the Scandinavian invasion.  Her novels are dark and scary, cloaked in a psychological analysis that is reminiscent of Nicci French.

In ‘Shadow’ there are a number of dark characters.  In fact, no one seems to be whole.  Everyone has secrets.  Families are dysfunctional.  The more one reads, however, the more familiar the overall tone becomes.  Today, perhaps there are no June Cleavers, and Beaver is twisted – we just didn’t know it back then.

Karin Alvtegen never seems to leave a reader a lot of room.  One either gets involved or puts the book down, and I can never put her down.  She looks with piercing eyes at the difficult art of being human.  And she sees extreme difficulty.  Take a moment, open to the friends and strangers around you, and you will perhaps see that there are many different levels of social awkwardness and disassociation touching your life.  In this time of pandemic and total social weirdness, Alvtegen’s words ring with real clarity.

The author clearly expresses one of the few universal truths – death is unavoidable.  The whole novel, however, explores what it is each of us leaves behind.  Even the famous and accomplished can die unfulfilled.  Elvis really never left the building, never got his world tour.  She advises we set aside the pursuit of happiness and instead embrace being content – the courage to settle down and dare to be satisfied with what we have.  Those considerations are why I consider Karin Alvtegen one of the very best of the Scandinavian invasion.

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Excerpts from the novel:

SOCIAL NEGLECT – Perhaps the person had lived in a home, but eventually felt better and was then considered too healthy to take up one of the few places offered by the state.  Then he was expected to take care of himself and was provided with his own flat, where isolation quickly allowed the disease to regain lost ground.  A lonely person who had been in need of care but once rejected, had not had the strength to beg or plead.  Then it was her duty to provide some form of redress, to do everything in her power to track down a relative who at least would come to the funeral.  Sometimes there was no one.  Just her, the pastor, the funeral director and the canter who followed the deceased to his final resting place.  In that case she had to try, with the help of photographs, and mementos, to get some sense of the person, to give the funeral a personal touch if possible.  Whenever she was the only one placing a flower on the coffin, she always prayed for forgiveness for society’s incompetence – that it had allowed this person to endure his misery without any intervention.

WOMAN – A woman was like a distant city in the night.  From far off the lights glittered like magical jewels, tempting and enticing with all their promises and possibilities.  But close up the city looked like all the others.  Full of buildings that needed renovation and with rubbish along the kerbs.

ALTERNATIVES – Released on holiday, people had to make up for all the lost time, the caveman in them was set free for a while to get some air.  After the workday was over he would join in the fun.  Seasonal work was a lifestyle that possessed everything for maintaining a distance from a dull contemptible life, that of some faceless suit with a mundane routine.  Parties that started at closing time and went on til morning, a few hours sleep so you could handle the evening shift that lasted till the next party started.  A superficial life in which he let himself float away like a feather on the breeze.  It all went so fast, so fast and depended on the whim of a second.  A constant search for kicks, a blissful mixture of sex, alcohol and other drugs.  Just as long as it heightened his sense of being alive and raised him above mediocrity, silencing what was tearing at his soul because he didn’t want to acknowledge it.  He was ready for anything, and if something did go wrong it was always possible to blame his blood alcohol level.

FEAR – It is by describing love that we rob fear of its power.

SOCIETY – Perhaps humanity was at a critical stage: intelligence had made it possible to eradicate the planet, while deep inside everyone was governed by powerful fears and primitive desires; an immense ongoing conflict hidden inside everyone.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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