I bought this at a sale in the late 90s, and of course I never read it. Until now.
Jonas Gardell is a Swedish… er… stand up comic? Who perhaps pioneered that “stand up, but tells horrible stories” thing that became a bigger thing a few years back, so I guess he was a pioneer.
From what I remember from the 90s, his shows were pretty successful? I mean, I just saw a couple on TV…
And this book is written very much in the tenor I remember his shows used to utilise: Everything is cranked to 11 all the time. Not a single sentence passes by without Max Pathos.
And short sentences and short paragraphs.
But I don’t think it really works on paper. It reads almost like a parody of a really intense book: Everything is miserable, and one horrible thing after another happens. And also: Religious damage. I lasted until page 95, and then I decided that I wasn’t really interested in reading the rest, so I ditched the book.
But I mean, it’s not all bad — I liked the parts where the hateful relatives exchanged letters with each other. (The book deals with, among other things, a conflict filled inheritance.) It’s got nerve, but it’s just too much.
And… many parts just feels like bullshit. Like the evil, evil, evil (divorced) father that had to pay child support, but took out loans to do so, and saw to it that his estate had nothing but those loans in it when he died. So his children inherited just his debt, and had to pay it all. Mua ha ha ha *twists moustache* I just kinda doubt that’s something that can happen in Swedish inheritance law — that you can inherit debt if you don’t want to.
You can probably take over the estate, debts and all, but if there’s just debts (like it was in this case), it just seems unlikely. But I don’t know Swedish inheritance laws. Let’s see…
Nej, enligt svensk lag ärver du inte skulder.
Fristelsenes fjell (1995) by Jonas Gardell (3.39 on Goodreads)