Reviewer: Sharon Brunner
Out of the Darkness: Classic Short Fiction from Sweden offers a splendid view of refuge, psychological mysteries and explores what makes life meaningful. The stories take place in Sweden, and authors from the 1880s to the 1950s tell a variety of stories. Some of the authors were Victoria Benedictsson, August Strindberg, Thorsten Jonsson, and Hjalmar Bergman. The publisher provided the year each story was written in the table of contents. Various characters appeared throughout the book, from a little girl named Bergit, a woman named Miss Holm, and a man named Newton. Some of the stories did not provide names for the characters. Various scenes were portrayed, such as a mental health institution, a ditch, a farm and stream, and a prison. The stories sparked my interest. The characters either visited dark moments in their lives or escaped darkness.
The themes that revealed themselves throughout the book were fate and grim reality. A man was going about his life, happy, and he was a generally nice man. On one fateful day, he killed a child with his car. A girl loses her mother and ends up being raised by a father who despises women. Miss Holm was released from a mental health facility, but found out she could not handle the outside world. She returned to the facility which felt comfortable to her. Greystone men on the mountain had the misfortune of being held prisoner for crimes they did not commit. The one man featured in the story lost his first and last name, he was number 65. In the beginning, they were treated horribly. Their treatment and conditions improved, but they still complained about being in prison. He dreamed that the dull grey cliff he lived on turned into lush greenery and flowers. He felt he was not worth it. Another character named Newton went on a journey that was filled with its own harshness, but in the end, one of the people he mistreated ended up traveling to the promised land.
Some of these stories relate to me personally. For example, the man who hit the little girl with his car reminded me of a car accident I was in on November 14, 1990. I was driving a K-5 Blazer, a rather large vehicle. A small car turned in front of me on a country road. I managed to turn the stirring wheel and did not hit her broadside. My actions saved her life. I was shaken by the accident. Another point mentioned in the book was how difficult it can be to be a woman. I am going to date myself by sharing that when I attended high school, girls were not permitted to wear pants until I was a junior. The school officials did allow girls to wear pants one day a week after that point. My father asked my sister and I, “Why couldn’t you be boys?” I think he wanted us to do more work, harder work that boys may have been able to handle. My father taught me how to change the oil for my car, and I could change a tire quicker than my boyfriend when I was in high school. My survival depended on me being a tomboy, someone forced to wear dresses.
The book that came to mind when reading this book was “Swedish Legends and Folktales,” written by John Lindow and published in 1978. It was a collection of stories from rural Sweden about daily life, social structure and regional identity. The movie that came to mind was “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which was about a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, and a brilliant and troubled hacker named Libeth Salander. Blomkvist uncovered a severely dysfunctional family, sexual violence and Nazi secrets. The movie was filmed in Sweden.
I recommend Out of the Darkness: Classic Short Fiction from Sweden for its grim view of reality, because of its social constructs and complex personalities, and for its use of symbolism. In the story “What the Tree Swallow Sang in the Buckhorn Tree” depicted a harsh prison life, one filled with hopelessness and only dreams or delusions brought a little relief to the discomfort. It would be devastating to kill someone, especially a little girl by hitting her with a car. The poor parent of that child. A child hid from her parents in a ditch and wondered what her place in the world was. Why would a man walk in the woods, discover a farm, wander into the water and fall on the rocks to be discovered at a later time? The stories lurked in the shadows while Swedish prose was brought to life with the use of symbolism and realism.
Title: Out of the Darkness: Classic Short Fiction from Sweden
Author: Various Swedish Authors
