Book review: Elöverkänsligheten will be credible in the Henry Bromanders high Voltage

the Novel has the not easy when it comes to depict the Swedish society. It is as if it were a camera with the ancient long shutter speed and as if it no longer can hope to record a reality that is moving quickly and is teeming with too much. Leave it all to standupkomedi and Instagram, to tv series and pods and tramsande presenter in P3.

the Disadvantage is that the romanformen can actually contribute to an image of the present which is something much more than ”the present”, than all the förbiflimrande opinions, spaningar and stereotypical underground identities that purports to be contemporary. One who has understood it is Henrik Bromander, as with blazing energy has taken on the task of making the literature of the lightweight.

Henrik Bromander: Where are the good masculinity?

a kind of rolldikter, as told through a variety of contemporary characters – in the ”Just a hug” by, for example, a young and trend-conscious culture journalist from Gothenburg, sweden who was mocking obsessed with just contemporary, all surface phenomena. The present, has Bromander realized, you can only access by individuals, in all their contradictions, and the contradiction can only portray through their own voices.

In the ”high Voltage” belongs to the voice before this svenskläraren Lotta, sick leave and utförsäkrad from the social Insurance office because of what she herself defines as ”electromagnetic hypersensitivity”. It is well caught, verbal and välartikulerad but full of the sort of claptrap that is typical of a kind of well-trained tondövhet – ”My mom is a chapter for itself”, ”our wages are lagging behind” while the ”importance of the teaching profession has dropped like a stone” and ”big business earn multum”. ”Eighteen years young, he stood on top of the social cream of the crop, at least within this clique”.

Lotta, what at first glance might think is a somewhat stereotypical way, single with two cats: ”Yes see the cats. They are just so quirky and amazing. To be friends with a cat is like being friends with an alien”. But by the intensity and detail in his design succeed Bromander do Lotta something much more than a stereotype. Certainly, the research in contemporary läraryrkets all the annoyances (changes in curricula, the idiotic parents that have comments on the grading, mobile phones in the classrooms) and the programskrifter which are compulsory in the ”elöverkänsliges” library (a short defence of the slandered foliehatten is a stilriktigt element) is impressively solid.

book review: Henry Bromanders ”Just a hug”

there is the extra dimension, actorising that makes Lotta individual and, therefore, credible. A long and bizarre rant about Täppas Fogelberg, who she at one point of their nedåtglidningsprocess fixed at, feels authentically crazy and suggestive. It is the type of fantasies about the celebrities that are often encountered in reality, but rarely in the printed text.

As personskildring considered, it is, in other words, virtuosmässigt (and entertaining). In addition, is the feeling of presence and miljöbeskrivningen superb, from the rektorsexpeditionen at Hvitfeldska in Gothenburg, sweden, where the new, cool headmaster Åsa cleaned up to remove the smell of Borkum Riff and decorated ”with monsteror in the windows and sofa cushions from Danish designermärket Hay”, to the colony for elöverkänsliga in the forests outside of Uddevalla, where Lotta to the last ports.

It is well as soon as possible so that actorising and driven in the story can do that it goes too fast sometimes. There is something motståndslöst in the plot that make it predictable: you know, right from the first sentences, that the people Lotta encounter will misunderstand her, misjudge her, make her disappointed. You know she's going to punish itself out, and that she herself will define it as that she becomes the outcast (to the exclusion takes the shape of ”electromagnetic hypersensitivity” feels arbitrary). As several of Bromanders previous characters, she is a human being whose frenzy will not allow her to seriously see oneself from the outside, and just as in several of his earlier novels is missing the point that would let the reader seriously see her.

Henrik Bromander: Swedish author bores me out

for me, a built-in contradiction in the Henry Bromanders författarpersonlighet. He wants to catch it förbiflimrande in a slow medium, he has a restless energy and a curiosity that drives him on, on. All this high voltage can cause one to feel a bit oversensitive sometimes. The run and the feeling of presence is purchased at the expense of depth and composition in his novels, and they leave me, at least, with a mixed feeling of dissatisfaction and honest admiration. So far.