Review by New York Times Review
Women fall for the wrong guy even in very nice places like Sweden. They just do it with red wine, long dinners and poems by Mayakovsky. Ester is an aspiring intellectual who finds herself enthralled by an artist/ provocateur named Hugo Rask. ("He had made his name combining moving images and text in a way that was considered both magnificent and singular.") Rask is a big deal. He gives public lectures to adoring fans. His art has made him a celebrity. (It's Sweden. Just go with it.) He also has the best pickup line ever. "No outsider has ever understood me so profoundly and precisely," he tells Ester, who falls hard for this poppycock since she's long on philosophizing and short on sense. Cue intense conversations about the "unifying principles of existence" and the works of Camus. That's like getting to third base in her crowd, so obviously Ester thinks it's serious. She's smitten. There's some indoor smoking and sex (guess which is more shocking), but then Rask stops returning Ester's calls. She doesn't take the hint. "She was absolutely not going to call him today. She called. He didn't answer." Is Rask a cad, or is Ester a stalker? Perhaps the two aren't mutually exclusive. Andersson (translated by the fantastically named Sarah Death) does a masterly job reeling in the reader. Abstract thinking may make for good philosophizing, but it's a buzzkill when it comes to relationships. Added bonus: The novel comes with long passages of brainy debate that you can memorize and use to impress friends at parties.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 21, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
This is a love story, but one devoid of sentiment and romance. Thirty-one-year old Ester Nilsson, a poet and essayist, is asked by a philosophy journal to interview artist Hugo Rask. Their intellectual sparring is an aphrodisiac for her, and she breaks up with nice but boring Per to embark with Hugo on a more intense life. Her expectations are heightened when, after months of just talking, she and Hugo spend a few nights together. Problem is, the feeling isn't mutual. But Ester presses on, overanalyzing every encounter and misinterpreting the most casual remarks, bouncing between elation and despair, finding excuses to show up at Hugo's studio, firing off ill-advised e-mails, text messages, and letters, and generally letting her obsession take over her life. This almost sounds like stalking, except that Hugo is complicit, being standoffish but not completely shutting the door. Though the perspective is entirely Ester's, we are able to read between the lines and see the extent to which she is deluding herself. Andersson's acutely observed take on unrequited love was awarded Sweden's August Prize in 2013.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this slender novel of psychological and romantic obsession, winner of Sweden's August Prize, Ester Nilsson is a Swedish poet of eight slim volumes who lives in Stockholm with her lover of seven years, Per. A woman who inhabits a seriously self-regulated world, Ester is happy to be invited to give a lecture on Hugo Rask, an artist. At the event, for which he is in attendance, Ester finds herself instantly taken with Hugo. Next, she is asked to write an article about the artist, which brings her further into his orbit and causes her breakup with Per. She and Hugo begin spending time together and having sex on a few separate occasions. Throughout it all, Hugo retains his emotional distance from Ester, who becomes more and more obsessed with him. In fact, the more indifferently he treats her, the more Ester convinces herself that she is totally in love with him. Over the course of 15 months, we see Ester repeatedly try to reach out to a distant Hugo. He, in turn, thoughtlessly responds to her just enough to give her the hope that one day her love for him will be returned. Andersson's stainless steel prose and forensic dissection of Ester's helplessness almost render her story dramatically pointless-and it will be enjoyable only to the reader who relishes spending time with a character embroiled in such unending masochistic misery. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Few novels about misconstrued emotion are as clear-eyed as Swedish journalist/novelist Andersson's 2013 August Prize winner. Her protagonist, precise, rational Ester Nilsson, is dedicated to bridging "the dreadful gulf between thoughts and words" in her poems and essays and keeps her life uncluttered by maintaining a soothing relationship with a man who pretty much leaves her alone. Then, when she gives a lecture on celebrated artist Hugo Rask, the great man himself rises from the audience to praise her obvious understanding of his work. Invited to visit him in the studio, Ester puffs up their pleasant affinity, imagining a soulmate-like passion between them. The result is a telling portrait of how we can misunderstand others-and ourselves. VERDICT In quietly modulated prose, Andersson keeps both herself and Ester in check, refreshingly avoiding scenes or sentimentality to give us down-to-the-bone bad thinking about love. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intellectual young woman falls for a prominent artist in this story of obsessive love. In plain, unsparing prose, Swedish author Andersson (this is her first novel to be translated into English) tells the story of Ester Nilsson, a woman who loses her bearings over a man. Ester is a sensible scholar and freelance writer when the book starts; she lives with her unexciting but reliable boyfriend, Per, and is contentedly devoted to intellectual pursuits. Then she's asked to give a talk on renowned artist Hugo Rask, with whom she immediately develops a fascination. She's determined to dazzle him with her lecture, thinking men like him were "receptive to the power of formulations and their erotic potential." She succeeds, is enthralled by his attention, and the stage is set for a relationship defined by her hero-worship and his passive acceptance of it. Ester notices the power imbalance early on: "Hugo never followed up anything Ester said. Ester always followed up what Hugo said. Neither of them was really interested in her but they were both interested in him." But, as will seem horribly familiar to some readers, this indifference doesn't deter her; instead it's fuel to the fire. Ester leaves Per and throws herself into a love that starts to guide all her waking movements. With classic, torturous uncertainty, she puzzles over the meaning of every encounter and the crushing blank of Hugo's frequent absences. Andersson's cleareyed depiction of this abject state is merciless, her writing clean to the point of starkness. But that harsh style is suited to the subject matterthe book asks, are human beings responsible for vulnerabilities in others? And can a woman win a man solely with intellectual firepower? The book is lean and compulsively readable as Ester finds increasingly improbable reasons to cling to hope. Andersson's sketching of the lovesick Ester and the preoccupied Hugo is so well done that every incensed text she sends him is another little piece of our collective heart as we follow a struggle that has existed for as long as human life: the lover and the loved. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
