“Best when anger becomes a means of transportation”
“Sinziana Ravini read Yrsa Keysendals debut novel ”Neutral””
“”Mom once said that she feel good when she travels, in order to physically move forward, but I moved always back when I travel.””
“So thinking, Anna, the lead character in the Yrsa Keysendals debut novel the Neutral position, when she travels by car through Sweden’s ingenmansländer, cities and petrol stations, to escape himself and his past, like a female version of beatnik parties indolent driftare.”
“nMan do not need hot Freud to know that självflykten is as good as impossible. The one who succeeds with it are usually drawn with a hefty dose of madness, which usually close into the ego even more in the självupptagenhetens mazes.”
“Keysendal reside at the subtle line between self-centeredness and total självförglömmelse but also friläget, the stage where the car’s gear is not yet engaged, the point where everything is still possible.”
“And what is Anna trying to escape from? The memory of the complex relationship to the family of Linda, who only had one arm, and therefore rarely could clap when Anna did something good.”
“Anna and Linda are already developing at an early age in a sometimes competitive, sometimes fusionell friendship that ends so badly that their paths diverge forever.”
“the Reason behind the break is that an unspoken secret and eventually becomes also the story’s engine. Friend Linda is going to have an accident which will lead to other, more or less anticipated accidents.”
“nKeysendal has written a very chilly and känslostram novel that is set in skymningszonen between a diskbänksrealistisk version of Lynch’s Mulholland drive and a non-psykologiserande paraphrase of Elena Ferrantes vänskapskvartett.”
“It is a feat in itself, but there are also some roudy moments, as the overly good mother who neither has a mind to get his pants nedskvätta of badkarsplask when Anna is small, or send money to her when she later gets out of them in season and out of season.”
“the fist pojkvännerna, sexscenerna, ungdomsfyllorna and the first steps towards the adult world is, with few exceptions, covered in an idyllic shimmer.”
“Keysendal writes best when she lets the anger get transport and the refusal to understand the path itself. When she allows the main character turns into a callous, on the border of psychopathic antihjältinna that neither seems to care about himself or others.”
“This is, of course, just a mask among others, but under each mask is another mask and yet another, for Keysendal seem to have understood one important thing – the true literature never let the last mask to fall.”