Book Review

By Derryll White

Alvtegen, Karin (2003). Betrayal.

I knew I was getting into dangerous territory when the anonymous male character on the first page of ‘Betrayal’ said “I don’t know.” A simple, clear answer usually. But to a woman asking, with some deeper and more personal question implied, a fatally faulty answer in my experience. A man has to know his mind when a woman asks any question of intent. So I buckled myself in for what I presumed would be an interesting and challenging read.

Alvtegen puts me in mind of American writer Cormac McCarhty’s comment, “You can do almost anything you want to a woman except bore her.” She looks long and hard at the ennui and disenfranchisement that occurs in relationships that do not renew themselves, when one person simply becomes attached to the steam locomotive the partner has become. Alvtegen laments the state of being when two people are taken hostage by each other, bound together only by their terror of being alone. Quite honestly, she scared me at times.

‘Betrayal’ is a hard book to read. Not because of the writing, let me assure you. Karin Alvtegen is a very good and precise writer. Little is wasted in this novel. The author takes the reader through one gut-wrenching, soul-shattering experience after another. Sadly, all the events ring true to me – people are that brutal to each other. Relationships are that ephemeral, or at least many can be. The author’s words mercilessly strip bare the longing each of us has for a stable, loving, passionate commitment from another. She makes the reader realize how tenuous that reality can be. And also how incredibly burdensome any act that threatens the constructed reality can become to all involved.

In the end Alvtegen left me with the realization that each of us walks a thin line between the reality we know and the dark abyss of the unknown. This is not a conventional mystery. It is a life almost known. I liked this book a lot.

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Excerpts from the novel:

LOSS – Twenty metres from their easy chairs were the train tracks, and every hour, year after year, the trains had passed that could have taken them away from there. By now they had come to terms with the fact that their own trains had left long ago, although other trains would continue thundering past, rattling the always sparkling glass in their living room window.

MARRIAGE – But marriage was no longer a common undertaking in which man and woman each took care of their own indispensable contributions. Mutual dependence was gone. Nowadays men and women were self-supporting units that were brought up to make it on their own, and the only reason they chose to get married was for love. She wondered if that was why it was so hard to make a marriage work, because the whole lifestyle depended on keeping love alive.

CHILDREN – She had sometimes wondered whether anyone would dare have a child if they fully understood in advance what it involved. To want the very, very best but always believe that you’re not doing enough.

BETRAYAL – “No one who betrays someone deserves to be forgiven. A betray can never be forgiven, will never be forgotten, it stays inside like an open wound. Something is torn apart and can never again be made whole.”

– 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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