Self-Control
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The second volume in Stig Saeterbakken's loosely connected "S Trilogy" Self-Control moves from the dark portrait of codependent marriage featured in the acclaimed Siamese to a world of solitary loneliness and repression. A middle-aged man, Andreas Feldt, feeling that he is unable to communicate with his adult daughter over the course of a friendly lunch, announces on an inexplicable whim that he is going to get a divorce. Though his daughter is initially shocked, she quickly assimilates this information and all returns to normal. Faced with this virtual invisibility—for no matter what actions he takes, the world seems to take no notice—Andreas is cut adrift from the certainties of his life and forced to navigate through a society where it seems virtually everyone is only one loss of self-control away from an explosion of dissatisfaction and rage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The last work of the acclaimed late Norwegian novelist, Saeterbakken (Siamese), who died earlier this year, is a grotesque and completely engrossing journey into the mind of depressed, cynical, and ever insightful Andreas Feldt, a Norwegian factory worker, whose voice is so deliciously incisive that it will make readers wonder if they have ever read a more candid, if at times unreliable, first-person narrative. The novel opens with Feldt meeting his estranged daughter for coffee and making up a spontaneous lie that he is divorcing her mother. Tempted by a feeling of new possibility for his tired and banal life with its monthly visits from loathsome friends and servicing the same out of-date machines under the eye of his incompetent boss, Feldt begins to challenge his routine while all the time trying to quell a silent and barely suppressible rage. For a 24-hour period, Feldt abandons his responsibilities for a dynamic night on the town, where he scrutinizes himself as well as others, but also finds a few kindred spirits. Saeterbakken's observations of human behavior, through the lens of Feldt, are stunning in their realistic complexity. Saeterbakken has managed to explore the range of our darker emotions, and readers may not emerge without having recognized a part of themselves.
