COLLECTED WORKS

A young man, longing to become a writer, comes of age.

As Martin Berg is growing up in Gothenburg, Sweden, he feels a certain restlessness. He is top of his class at school, but the other students bore him—that is, until he meets Gustav Becker, a precocious would-be artist with a similar taste for music and books. Together, they stay out all night, smoking cigarettes and drinking, while Martin dreams of becoming a writer. This debut novel by Sandgren is wonderfully evocative of late-1970s and early-'80s Sweden. The boys’ stomping grounds—and dissatisfactions—are rendered in exquisite detail. Sandgren alternates between Martin’s youth and his middle age. At 40, he co-owns a small, intellectual publishing house, and the promise of his youth seems to have been wasted: He spends almost every day counting down the hours. “And then came those hours,” Sandgren writes. “When all the chores of the day were done but it was too early to go to bed.” Martin’s wife, Cecilia, disappeared more than a decade ago, leaving Martin with two children. With no word from her since, Martin has been unable to move on. Cecilia’s disappearance makes this novel, in part, a mystery: Where has she gone, and why? Those questions provide the novel with a compelling throughline, but even without it, Sandgren’s descriptions of Martin’s earnest but slightly pretentious striving toward intellectual brilliance are witty, moving, and detailed enough on their own to carry the story forward. If the novel has any faults, it is that Sandgren occasionally hits the same note more than once. There are more than a few descriptions of decrepit student flats, for example, with dirty, food-encrusted dishes piled in the sink. Descriptions like these could have been condensed, but even as they are, they don’t constitute a major flaw.

A richly evocative work from a major new talent.