“A furious attack against the men and the two”
“Sven Anders Johansson reading Aase Berg’s ”Haggan””
“”Men hate men. Men may hate women. But if women start to hate men, then the whirr of the fear in the bones of the fellas. I know why. When a woman hates you she is an old hag.” See there, a concise description of what Aase Berg’s new book is all about. And not just that. Haggan is the novel’s title, the protagonist, narrator, subject, and method, all at the same time.”
“the Further a protagonist, but he only appears in the third person. He called Victor and was Thelmas, as Haggans name says, lovers for a time. Now he has gone back to his wife and life behind the neat facade. Thus exposed, he Haggans desire and hatred. “
“the Setup is so familiar, not to say trite: triangeldramat, otrohetshistorien. The original? It is in this case in the way in which the story is told: disjointed, repetitive, monologiskt, hateful and autofiktivt. The main character is a middle-aged poet and essayist who commute between the snow shoveling in the Njutånger and vinmingel in Stockholm. Kind of like Aase Berg himself, if I understand it right.”
“This sexual world records is enshrined in a little bit different twists and turns type hundrafjorton times – I find it hard to think of anything less sexy. (In which case it shall be the recurring phrase, ”have the cojones”.) “
“We have visited a few times; she seems nice. But ”nice” is precisely what the main character is not – to be a Hag means that you leave all the niceness, all the will to please. There are things you can do in the novels: to reinvent itself in Haggans form. In any case, if you are a woman.”
“Against the background of Metoo-the movement, it is easy to see the point with the grip. Haggan is, one might say, the antidote to ”kulturmannen”, against – yes, we all know the examples, and type: he who first feted and courted, on the worst, until everything suddenly turns and tributes not in contempt. It is no wild guess that the book will be hailed for its feminist force, at the same time as its manshat also probably will provoke other readers. “
“I like the ambition, but is mixed into the final product. Thematically, the novel has interesting points of contact with Johanna Peace Nora, but while the Peace worked with concentration and precision, go the Mountains as soon as in the opposite direction. The volume is then turned up, the brush strokes are so broad, the temperament so uppkryddat to all the nuances and complications tend to be lost: the feminine set against the masculine, authenticity against the facades, overconfidence against ambivalence.”
“the Result is that a crossing of the Notes from the källarhålet and Åsa Beckman-chronicle. ”Men fail, always”, it is stated already on the first page. Okay, I think, but is it not better to write a novel about a less predictable topic?”
“in Retrospect, it is as if it monomana tjathatet turn over: I understand the to last him. And feel with his wife, which is consistently exposed to Haggans blind contempt. Is it the sentence? I think of Svenska Dagbladet’s critic Therese Eriksson, who in his review of Aase Berg and Niklas Wahllöfs book Glädjehuset Sweden (2017) wondered if the book’s simple critique of society, which was deliberately simple. A sort of intentional satire of the satire, ”in which each objection to it to get it as objects that seem a little stupid in the head”?”
“For the sake of safety, it is stated at one point that the narrator is unreliable and that ”Victor” does not have a model, but many. Well, I get it: this is not a diary but a novel. But my skepticism does not depend on the Thelmas haggighet. But to the thinking of the novel serves is so square, not to say conservative. Hatred is indeed a powerful literary engine; the problem is its inability to free itself from the hated. The hatred confirms, and more than that: through his turned up and the flat rate antiborgerliga rhetoric expresses the book’s most enormous longing after the bourgeois prosperity, which are absent in its cultured outsiderskap. “
“Same thing with tvåsamheten: the monogamous love between Victor and his wife) mocked the page up and page down, does not prevent the novel from to excel in the traditional romantic stencils. ”We loved the us actually so far beyond time and space two people can get.” This sexual world records is enshrined in a little bit different twists and turns type hundrafjorton times – I find it hard to think of anything less sexy. (In which case it shall be the recurring phrase, ”have the cojones”.) ”Apparently the release literature that, in fact, cements the förtrycksapparater is more common than you think”, it is stated towards the end of the book. Yes, that’s right.”
“But then it gets slowly better. Less peremptorily, analytically sharper, but with sustained anger. ”The men are narcissistic stuffed animals. All of them.” Even the self-control will be tightened: ”Men expect to own the world. Women expect, in the best cases to own a man. Just as I am. In this book.””
“Under the flat-rate tillkämpade in her civilian identity, grows in other, less market-based feelings. The grief over a lost love. The anxiety of to be unselected. It is as if the book gravitates toward a position marked by futility, a mode where you have given up all aspirations – and thereby wins a great deal of freedom. ”I’m in limbo. I miss the dreams. Everything is broken. Everything is meaningless. Everything is possible.” “
“lastly, it is as if the novel sags. Thus molds itself into something more than negationer, slogans, and empty pep. Finally, find a way out of the förtrycksapparaterna.”
“It strikes me that this is limbo, in a way, is the novel’s epicentre. The hatred and in her civilian identity as just a necessary approach to get there.”
“Albert Bonniers förlag”
