In the summer, and after a period of illness died author Kate Larson in her home on the island of Öland. I mention it right away, for the knowledge that the author has just died, to top it all at such a young age as 56, of course impacts the reading of what came to be Larson’s last work, the short story collection ”Adhesive”. I will myself to be touched by the book even before I opened it; as if a man’s death just becomes bearable and meaningful in the power of a romantic narrative of his genius.
Kate Larson was in any case an unusual author. In addition to short stories, she wrote novels, poetry, and essays. In 2009 she graduated as phd in theoretical philosophy with a thesis on the kärleksbegreppet of Iris Murdoch. She also was a beloved friend and the interlocutor evidenced by Kurt Almqvist and Anna-Karin Palms and the afterword. There are two warm and enthusiastic texts without the slightest traits of pliktskyldighet, written with the same openness as the stories themselves.
Read more: Anna-Karin Palms memorial for Kate Larson
in the ”Glue” takes place in everyday environments, in Stockholm’s inner city or in the secluded house in the countryside. All act in different ways on the human samvarons problems and inevitability. People try to approach each other (in town), then withdraw (to the country). They fall in love, misunderstand, get disappointed, try again; their small size, illuminated by a friendly and forgiving light.
Larson stresses the self isolation by consistently tell in the first person. The short story ”the Beautiful Marjoram” depicts, for example, the relationship between two close friends, one of which on hold considering how the other, the artist Marjoram, as well as förfulas and lose luster the more she hang out with a third friend, the småborgerliga Pernilla. But Marjoram is not called even Marjoram: it is just a name the narrator gave her, for it is finer than her actual. The other is always a projection, someone we never can fully meet and understand.
In the afterword points Anna-Karin Palm on the site and landscape significance of Larson’s literary universe. This is particularly clear in the first and last short story. Both depict people in self-imposed exile in the carefully described house in the country. Their ensamtillvaro interrupted when a oinbjuden guest intrudes – a guest who, however, turns out to have played a crucial role in the host’s life, and which, in principle, bear the responsibility for that they sought out the beloved house at all. One senses here a christian nådebudskap, a faith in the brotherhood.
The other is always a projection, someone we never can fully meet and understand.
corseted short stories together by a vardagstragikomisk twist. But usually let Larson them lose momentum and run out of themselves, without any symboltung final. To ”Glue” the ends of four little misplaced poems feels entirely natural. They just hang in there, lagging behind, as things do in life. A life in Kate Larson, case, should have been longer.
