Collected Works: A Novel: 'A wry bestseller that reads like the effortlessly chic European cousin of Fleishman is in Trouble' (Telegraph)

Product Information

Poised at the intersection of life and art, reality and imagination, [ Collected Works] blends the thrill of mystery with the curiosity and depth of philosophical inquiry.”— The New Yorker Is Collected Works’ immense length justified? Yes. Could it have been shorter? Also, yes. Will Collected Works help to restore the literary tradition of the long novel? Very possibly.

No, Martin told himself. It never was. He shook his legs one at a time to regain control over them. As soon as the woman turned around, any similarity would be gone. Look, now she’s moving . . . Like Martin's own 'collected works' there's an intentionally fragmented and unfinished feel to Collected Works -- reflecting life itself, after all, as it does not usually proceed or unwind in the neatest and most predictable way. This kind of self-centredness is hardly the exception in Collected Works, which pulls no punches when it comes to skewering the preening, posturing, down-punching Swedish intellectual elite. (...) Wittgenstein is just one of many philosophers and artists invoked, but the author doesn’t allow big ideas to overburden the plot: explosive revelations arrive with a slap whenever things begin to drag. Schrödinger also appears, and the novel’s interest in impish paradoxicality even attains a formal expression: this is a book that manages to be both far too long and, somehow, pretty much exactly the right length." - David Annand, Times Literary Supplement Cecilia's life certainly seems more interesting than Martin's -- even before she left (and at least there are some glimpses of some of her formative experiences) -- but Martin's story is an often entertaining one, complete with year-abroad in France in his youth (with Gustav) and a variety of interesting experiences. The novel rambles along agreeably enough with its cast of quite interesting characters, for the most part contrasting past and present in an intriguing fashion.His failure as a writer show his limitations -- but also make him the man he is: a good family man, a good boss. This novel has everything a good book needs: suspense, mystery, history, art, relationships, friendship, betrayal and death. Because the story keeps zapping between different scenes, it never gets tired. At the same time, it is not too composed.” The novel has the feel of one of Gustav’s mag­nificent oils; layer upon layer of careful brush strokes and colour that amount to something close to photorealism. […] Sandgren has a sly eye for ­comedy […] A novel to savour” Dit is een boek voor iemand die in een jaar véél boeken leest. Om vast te stellen dat dit boek ze allemaal overstijgt. Lydia Sandgren is a debut author, but she writes this novel as if she’s done nothing else for decades…”

Sandgren writes her story well, and Collected Works is consistently engaging, but there could have been even more to it. Family hemmed in individuals through arbitrary prohibitions and rules that had to be followed, not for any rational reason, but simply because that's how it was done, which was completely unintellectual.

Doormat Navigation

Samlade verk är en koloss till bok sådär rent fysiskt, och även om jag gillade läsningen blev jag aldrig helt och fullt uppslukad, stjärnögd och såld. Det är nog därför jag tänker att den här romanen lika gärna kunde ha varit något kortare och mer lätthanterlig. He has only a single publication credit to his name, in an anthology "of promising writers born in the sixties". Part bildungsroman, part psychological mystery and part family saga, Collected Works largely delivers on its grand ambition. Sandgren is great on detail, whether it’s descriptions of her characters’ ­various apartments and routines, student gatherings, exhibitions or publishing parties. The novel has the feel of one of Gustav’s mag­nificent oils; layer upon layer of careful brush strokes and colour that amount to something close to photorealism. (You could practically use Collected Works to map your way round Gothenburg’s bars and restaurants.) Sandgren has a sly eye for ­comedy, too, especially in her portrait of Martin as an earnest young writer. “Kneading sensory impressions into words,” he scribbles in his notebook in a Paris café, “proving, baking. Was it good imagery or not?” he wonders. “It made him want to eat a baguette.” Gustav, meanwhile, is hurting too. His obsession with Cecilia’s inexplicable disappearance had made his art hagiographic, fixated on her image. When posters for Gustav’s retrospective plaster Cecilia’s face on major billboards across the city, Martin’s daughter Rakel learns a haunting fact that points toward her mother’s whereabouts. She and her brother chase this clue across time, memory, and Europe, to discover why their beloved mother abandoned her family, with the imagined hope that the question of what makes a person can ever be answered.