Book review of “The Details”: An exploration of the subtleties of interpersonal interactions
A poignant depiction of loss, sadness, and remembrances, Ia Genberg’s 2022 Swedish book The Details is on the shortlist for the 2024 International Booker Prize. The novel, which was translated by Kira Josefsson, is broken up into four sections, each of which has a character connected to the protagonist, the lady who is writing about them.
The story opens frighteningly, with the writer experiencing a fever due to a sickness and feeling compelled to revisit a certain work. The reader is then transported to Sweden in the 1990s, during her romantic relationship with Johanna. The two females have a passion for books. The two talk about books when Johanna isn’t critiquing her partner’s work or preoccupied with managing her own hectic schedule as a radio host. The writer’s life is not limited to this, however. We follow her buddy Niki in the next segment as she abruptly vanishes. The writer then has to deal with Alejandro, a lover, who leaves surprising things behind. And lastly, her mother Brigette, whose life has been too turbulent for the writer to ever find peace with.
Genberg loves contrasts. Her thoughts and words resemble a well-executed, deliberately colored picture in many aspects. They are clearly separate from one other. It’s evident in the relationships she has with each individual. Life “was lived in one direction—forward” for Johanna. I seldom finished something significant, which is how we were different from one another, the author says. Their apartment was never tidy or orderly, and Niki “loved things most people found gross.” Alejandro thinks he is destined for an uncomfortable existence, one that does not confine him to the comforts of Sweden. Though Brigette never said anything to her kids, she appeared to be the most vocal member of a political gathering. These contrasts that Genberg depicts via vignettes have a certain enchantment, and it is in these little details—rather than being gimmicky or unoriginal—that the tale comes together. By focusing on the subtleties of a person’s beliefs, behaviors, choice of music or literature, and perception of others, the author elucidates the unforeseen vicissitudes of life. Similar to how contrast is utilized in art, authors use it to expose characters just as much as they do themselves.
That being said, contrasts shouldn’t shatter individuals; differences don’t have to be divisive. We see ways of coping with contrast as she responds to Johanna’s “words and gestures” and acknowledges that “that’s all there is to the self… traces of the people we rub-up against.” In a time where there are always more choices accessible, whether it comes to friends or romantic partners, Genberg’s sincere acknowledgement of acceptance serves as a crucial reminder. It serves to highlight how deeply we may allow love to permeate even the most mundane aspects of our existence, and how intimately one can choose to love another. The basic thesis of this book is that relationships are more fulfilling when you accept someone who is different from you.
Like the protagonist of Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegül Savas, it is a depiction of a writer who is tearing apart illusions from her life in order to create a book. The authors in both books are thrust into a world in which they uncomfortably recognize that writing both exists and is eaten in this world. During one of her writing seminars, Genberg’s heroine is informed that she has “a melancholic eye for details.” She and her buddy Sally giggled at it. But eventually, the notion that that was all there was to it overtook her. Boundaries between Istanbul, her home, and Paris, her haven from it, as well as between her need to write and her obsession with the author M, all began to blur for Savas’s Nunu. Similar to Genberg’s protagonist, she is hypnotized by writing, but she is unable to write anything when Johanna is not there.
She acknowledges that writing about individuals who have come into and gone out of your life is a journey, but how does one write about someone who has brought you into the world but has never lived in it themselves? Her writing comes to life at these times of uncertainty for her. But in her work, she poses the issue, Is it necessary to live depressing lives in order to write?
The best-written chapter is the last one about her mother. It sticks with the reader in the same manner as A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux. In the same way that Ernaux’s work was rife with remorse and guilt for the mother, Genberg is also “observing her attentively” in order to comprehend Brigette. It shatter the reader’s heart as if every aspect of the writer’s life were designed to be seen separately rather than as a whole. The moms in both tales convey the sadness that is the core of the authors’ hopelessness; that anguish is passed on from one woman to the next not by blood but rather through the experience of seeing and coexisting with other mothers who struggle to make life simpler for their children.
The book has already garnered a number of awards; Genberg’s selection to the Booker shortlist is just one more. The book, all 156 pages of it, has you. It forces you to look within and then gently thrusts you back out into the world to face it.
