Acts of Infidelity by Lena Andersson
Is there a definitive Scandinavian personality type?
We may, when contemplating the composite countries of Scandinavia, think of progressive liberal democracies at the forefront of social justice and equality. We might think, as well, of Danish Modern design as epitomized by Arne Jacobsen, the sunlight Arts and Craft charm of Carl and Karin Larsson’s Swedish country style, or Finnish Tove Jansson’s Moomins and her novel, The Summer Book. You might, if you are of a certain age, remember when in 1967 the release of Vilgot Sjoman’s film, I Am Curious Yellow, conveyed the notion that the Swedes are a lot more relaxed and enlightened about sexual matters than the rest of the world.
More recently, there have been a number of whimsical, if a bit dark, comic tales, exemplified by the Swedish novels, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, 2009 and its sequel, The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man, 2018, by Jonas Jonasson, and A Man Called Ove, 2013, by Fredrik Backman.
Happy lands whose populaces are forward thinking and well adjusted.
On the other hand, we might think of a people who, collectively, are dourly pessimistic, riven by insecurities and, to para-phrase a para-phrase, adept at snatching misery from the jaws of a happy ending.
The latter assessment could be supported by a great deal of the arts and letters to come out of the area from the nineteenth century on. In the dramatic arts there is a line from the plays of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg through Ingmar Bergman’s and later, Lars von Trier’s films, to the more recent, hugely popular, television serials like The Killing and The Bridge. In the visual arts, immediately, there is Norway’s most famous painter, Edvard Munch and his, lesser known, contemporaries and heirs. Of the former there is the Finnish painter, Helena Schjerfbeck, recently exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, who’s later works certainly prove that Munch wasn’t an anomalous figure.
It’s a temptation to bring up the dark underpinnings of many of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales but then the same can pointed out in stories related by Germany’s Grimm Brothers, France’s Charles Perrault and most of the rest of the world’s folk tales.
Regarding other literature, without delving to far into the region’s rich and varied literary history, it’s sufficient to note the proliferation in recent years of ‘Nordic-Noir’ crime novels. The writers of these, almost to a man and woman, are heavily invested in the ‘detective hero with issues trying to catch a villain with even bigger issues’ trope. While this is a wide-spread feature of contemporary crime fiction, the Scandinavian writers; from the Sjowall and Wahloo collaborations and Peter Hoeg to Henning Mankell, Stieg Larrson, Jo Nesbo and so many more, really make a meal of it.
It’s also worth giving a brief mention to the Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgard’s six volume ‘auto-fiction’ opus, My Struggle, where unhappiness is piled on misery on top of bad luck and bad choices in excruciating autobiographic detail.
So where does Swedish author, Lena Andersson’s novel, Acts of Infidelity, published in English 2019, fit in?
Right from the start I was put in mind of Ibsen and Bergman. This take on it was certainly helped by the two main characters, Ester Nilsson and Olof Sten being respectively, a playwright and an actor.
Middle-aged Ester first meets middle-aged, and married, Olof when he appears in a play she has written. The play is titled Threesome and is a “melancholy reflection on the agonies of love”. A bit of ironic foreshadowing going on here.
Ester falls, obsessively, in love with Olof and there ensues a long drawn-out affair. An affair in which Olof engages in much ‘gaslighting’ and general mindf—ckery. Ester puts up with this, in spite of her own, and everyone else’s, better judgement. Better judgement that she possesses in spades; being a well-educated published author not only of plays but poetry and criticism as well, and capable of finely honed insight into her own and others characters. That is except for Olof’s, of whom she carries on believing that, and in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that he is going to leave his wife, Edda, for her. A wife, another educated professional, who is apparently blissfully, or perhaps willfully, unaware of all the shenanigans her husband has going on.
In Olof we find everything we would expect, un-generously, in an actor. He is a narcissist, a transparently manipulative liar, and possessed of a proud ignorance borne of an in-curious mind in combination with a willful lack of self-knowledge.
The author rather neatly, and subtly, sums up the difference in their personas about mid-way through the novel, “The wordlessness was difficult for Ester. A phenomenon didn’t really exist until it was articulated. For Olof, it disappeared with articulation.”
The reader, along with Ester’s patient and sensible friends, is left perplexed about what it is that she finds so attractive about such a creep.
So, given the above, what makes this such a compulsive read?
Not being able to tear your eyes away from the slow-motion car crash that is Ester and Olof’s relationship could be part of the reason. But, referring back to the pre-amble of this review, I think there is an under-lying Bergman-esque sense that we are going to (after wading through this morass of unpleasantness) gain some deeply existential in-sight into the human condition. A feeling aided by the story being relayed, in god-like third-person, from Ester’s perspective. By the end of the novel the reader feels surely that they, and Ester, will have learned something profound about the mysteries of life and love.
I’m not sure that we do.
And in that, I rather suspect that Lena Andersson might just be having a bit of satirical fun with her readers.
Acts of Infidelity is available in 2019 paperback edition for £8.99