Helioskatastrofen

While at The English Book Shop looking for something else, I stumbled across The Helios Disaster. I’m obsessed enough with Linda Boström Knausgård to read or buy almost everything she writes (though not enough to keep up with new releases). I’ll have more to say on the available English translation after I’ve read and compared the two; at the moment I’ve only read the original Swedish.

Author: Linda Boström Knausgård

My GoodReads rating: 3 stars

Average GoodReads rating: 3.5 stars

Language scaling: N/A

Summary: A young girl in the north of Sweden realizes she’s an incarnation of the goddess Athena.

Recommended audience: Fans of Swedish modernism

In-depth thoughts: My first introduction to  Boström Knausgård was Grand Mal, her collection of flash fiction. I’ve found that the longer her work gets, the more impact it loses. There are pieces in Grand Mal that have stayed with me years after reading them; their sparse minimalism is haunting and at the same time complete. Helioskatastrofen loses that minimalism, as the longer the story goes on, the more we necessarily learn about the world, and the more magic is subsequently lost. Still, there is something arresting and creepy about the worlds that Boström Knausgård creates, in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Author: katherine

Stockholm-based translator and copyeditor of American extraction.

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