How do we tell our stories to ourselves?

They say (whoever "they" are) that you can't judge a book by its cover. Add to that (and you can credit me for this) that you can't judge a book by its heft.

The Details by Ia Genberg and translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson is only 133 pages, but what it lacks in verbiage it makes up for in impact. The pages are black with long sentences that the translator says are sometimes longer in Swedish which has to be a translator's challenge. 

The story, such as it is, is narrated by a woman who lies bedridden with a high fever. Struck with an urge to revisit a novel from her past she finds an inscription inside the book: a get-well-soon message from Johanna, an ex-girlfriend who is now a famous television host. As she flips through the book, pages from the (unnamed) woman’s own past begin to come alive, scenes of events and people she cannot forget.

There are moments with Johanna, and Niki, the friend who disappeared years ago without a phone number or an address and with no online footprint. There is Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities mask a secret.

The Details is built around these four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, make up a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is a portrait's real subject, the person being painted or the person holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? The novel raises profound questions about the nature of relationships and how we tell our stories to ourselves and to others. 

Genberg says she "started over from the beginning of whatever chapter she was working on each time she sat down to write, rereading the entire cloth of the text countless times"—a literary Penelope. The result is dense, almost prose poetry, yet somehow still readable, accessible, which has to be an achievement by the translator. I believe that reading—and rereading—The Details will help make me a better writer.