BECKOMBERGA

In Stockholm, a daughter contends with her institutionalized father’s mental illness.

“I’m fine. Life is a work of grief,” Jackie’s father tells her near the end of Stridsberg’s latest novel. It’s a statement that perfectly encapsulates Jim, who has spent a formative portion of Jackie’s girlhood institutionalized in the well-known Stockholm mental hospital for which the book is named. At first, Jackie visits Jim with her mother, Lone; then, when Lone refuses to return—her relationship with Jim has fallen apart—Jackie visits Beckomberga on her own. She comes to see Jim, but she ends up closely observing the doctors, nurses, and other patients—Olof, a man who has spent almost his whole life at the hospital; Sabina, a glamorous woman reminiscent of Zelda Fitzgerald. Jim’s illness is the defining factor in Jackie’s life. “It is always there,” Jackie realizes, “this threat of being transferred or locked up or sedated. I am the only one free to leave, and all I want is to stay.” Stridsberg takes a casual approach to the novel’s timeline, freely mixing portions from Jackie’s childhood with various scenes from her adulthood, when she’s had a son of her own, or she and Lone have returned to visit Beckomberga. Sometimes dreams are intermingled with the rest, or scenes that Jackie, the steely-tongued narrator, couldn’t have been present for. The result is a narrative that itself frequently feels dreamlike, with recurring descriptions of trees and birds. And while Stridsberg’s prose is lovely—at one point, she writes, Jim “could smell [Sabina’s] scent wafting past like a wound in the air”—the storytelling, or the pacing, quite often lag. There isn’t much sense of momentum. That might be part of Stridsberg’s point, but it doesn’t make for satisfying reading.

The novel’s fantastical quality doesn’t quite make up for a stagnant plot, but Stridsberg’s prose sings.