Accustomed as we are (probably unaccustomed) to associating Nordic novels with noir genre, it never hurts to take a tour of many other genres developed with success and by good pens in any of these Scandinavian countries.
Marie Bennett is a good example of a counter-current writer who cultivates (at least for the moment) a very different theme. Starting from her hometown, the southern Malmo of Sweden, Marie leads us to 1940.
In that small town lived then Georg and Kerstin, until that winter of 1940 many of the young people were recruited to defend the country from the Soviet outpost that, under the protection of the violence unleashed at the beginning of the Second World War, considered that attacking Finland would endow it with a privileged position and with great resources with which to strengthen itself in what was to come in the following years.
The war lasted 105 days, Finland lost part of its resources to the Russians and Sweden managed to defend its border. But Georg and other teammates did not feel that half victory as their own. Punished after refusing to obey their despotic and irresponsible commands, they spent a great deal of time in labor camps.
Georg was not the same when he returned to Malmo three years later. Kerstin had felt the harshness of winter in her flesh with all the burden to herself. But also a momentous change has turned her into a new, liberated, absolutely different woman.
Returning to Georg's arms means giving up his most natural happiness. And the end of that happiness makes him feel the world falling on his back.
Three years is a long time… At the end of 1943 Kerstin sees Georg return. He knows that he has had a bad time and that he needs shelter and affection more than ever. But she is no longer the same woman who would have hugged him tightly the day after leaving ...
You can now buy the novel In a hotel in Malmo, Marie Bennet's surprising first novel, here: