I know of several writers and artists who work extra at Systembolaget. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but there is a sort of anachronistic logic of the cultural workers who do not sell out to the advertising industry often ends up on the floor on the company. For two years, then came Emil Boss collection of poems, ”Acceleration”, which describes the work and the environment. It is also issued in the form of a thick kassakvittorulle.
Måns Wadensjös experience I don’t know, but I assume that he also has worked their hours in the ”morgonplocket”. If not, he has done thorough research. I trust namely due to his language when he writes about ”kvartspallar” and ”kvällsrivning” and ”crushes” and ”re-package” and the special hatred of vinkartonger from Australia: ”Sixes with folded corners! They do not go to the stow at each other, they are not cut up and is it something that crushed you can give you hell of it is some sleazy fucking shiraz from South Australia! Always!”
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we follow the tjugosexåriga Alice begins as employed by the hour in the ”Shop”. The word ”Wine” is never mentioned. The shop is located ”in a shopping mall in the outskirts of Stockholm” and described initially as an aquarium, ”as each aquarium there was a whole world of its own – once you stare into it or find themselves in the midst of it, you don’t know anymore if it is the world which is on the outside or the inside that is the real.” The associations are, of course, to the ”Axolotl”, one of the main short stories of the argentinian author Julio Cortázar, which deals with the same phenomenon.
Before kassabandet we are equal, skåpsupare as vinsnobb, unemployed or official.
This aquarium also represents the whole of the novel’s world, and if the story is sometime on the way to pull in a different direction, brought it quickly back into the store. It makes all the drama that’s taking place inside Alice and her colleagues, the boss, the customers and the guards become to the intensified chamber play that is gradually growing in importance.
I like how Wadensjös soft inzoomningar is able to portray both worn and loyalty in the workplace. The joy of a skill that is developed, a knowledge that is increasing and how a vision that was not there from the beginning to take shape. Just by staying so long in one place, and actually reside there, it creates a richer understanding. It is not as simple as the novel is just a criticism of the working conditions. You can just as easily see it as a declaration of love to all who work in this strange monopoly with its intricate regulations, and internal language.
book review: Måns Wadensjös ”People in Solna”
ten years ago with the novel ”the Birth”, which depicts the work of a maternity ward. It evokes a similar suggestive akvariekänsla, as if life outside the eeas did not exist. His last novel, ”People in Solna”, is autobiographically inflected, and I think that Wadensjö undeniably has an attraction to the crowded room: ”And at the very bottom in a corner of the apartment was my room, just as if the room had been a small box inside a larger box, which in turn lay embedded in the house. So it continued, with boxes that were made dense about each other when night fell on the Solna, and at the very bottom of them I had hidden me, and cuddled down under the covers.”
In this novel has Wadensjö crept out of the quilt, and developed its expression and narration. It is a step forward in an already from the beginning to skilfully authorship. ”Monopoly” is a novel about a woman who works at Systembolaget, but it is also an entertaining samtidsskildring of Sweden in the day. It is a kongenialt choice of the point of intersection where the old and the new country meet.
Before the kassabandet we are equal, skåpsupare as vinsnobb, unemployed or official. We believe us to be unique souls, but our drinking habits follow a stunningly collectively and carefully elaborate patterns. It is not quite enjoyable to see it laid bare.
