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

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Granted, we spend a great deal of the novel in their youth, and who among us can say we were not absolutely insufferable in our teens and early 20s? These three, however, and the two men in particular, never shake off their pretentiousness, self-absorption and intellectual snobbery. Each the product of privilege – they’re all from rich families with Gustav effectively funded by a distant yet wealthy grandmother – the men in particular while away their prime years getting steaming drunk in bars and at parties jousting with equally insufferable youths over art, philosophy and literature. 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. 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. Every sentence has been constructed with immense care. Every scene has been honed and polished until it sings. There is not a word that hasn’t been carefully considered before its inclusion, then reconsidered with each redrafting. […] It is without doubt one of the most meticulously built works of fiction I’ve read in a long time.”

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. The book] is perfect when you want to immerse yourself completely in a story over a period of time, it is actually a bit like watching a Scandinavian series: Sandgren takes her time (but not too much time) to develop her characters and their arcs; it is all described very lifelike, without delving too far into explanation, the dialogue is good and it is accessible.” Thrilling, brilliant and immense in the best possible way… teeming with ideas and digressions on literature, art, history and love’ Francesca Reece, author of VoyeurIt all makes for a good read -- though, despite its length, one can be left feeling there's less there than one would have wished. Eleven!” Mimmi said and pulled on him to make him move. “What’s the matter with you? It’s not one of the buildings sinking into the mud, is it?” Hij, Gustav en Cecilia zijn dan een drie-eenheid. Als geliefde van Martin, fungeert Cecilia ook als muze en model voor de boezemvriend, een kunstenaar in hart en nieren. Zij wordt Gustavs grote inspiratiebron voor de schilderijen uit zijn meest succesvolle periode. Samen vertrekken Martin en Gustav in hun studentenjaren naar Parijs waar Cecilia hen later vervoegt, om inspiratie op te doen voor hun culturele interesses. Martin jaagt dan nog steeds de droom na om een onnavolgbaar schrijver te worden terwijl Gustav al goed op weg is in het ontdekken van zijn kunst en kunnen. Martin heeft dan ook op dat moment een te romantisch beeld van een schrijversbestaan voor ogen. In prachtig proza - slechts af en toe ontsierd door de al te Noord-Nederlandse vertaling (godsamme, wij taaien hier niet af, wij gaan, net als de Zweden vermoed ik, gewoon naar huis) - vertelt Lydia Sandgren hoe de vijftigjarige uitgever Martin Berg op de woonkamervloer terecht is gekomen, met stapels papier om zich heen. An] absorbing story . . . [ Collected Works] is a witty, toothy, family saga, unashamedly intellectual but rarely bogged down by the weight of its theories . . . It's refreshing to read such a confidently ambitious work that holds art, literature, and philosophy close to its heart . . . Collected Works is an assured, bittersweet novel that, like youth, seems to have it all—energy, aspiration, and self-delusion."

Thirty-three-year-old Cecilia Berg, mother of two and promising scholar, had vanished without a trace. Collected Works] has flavours of the realism of her countryman, Karl Ove Knausgard, more than a hint of emotional American big hitters like Jeffrey Eugenides or Jonathan Franzen, and something of the twists and turns of a chronicle like War and Peace."

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Without everything being tied up neatly, the novel doesn't offer easy satisfaction in its end, but that's not what Sandgren ever was after; so also the novel's bulk was to a purpose -- indeed, in some sense is its purpose. Rakel, too, in particular, is given a significant role, and along with Gustav there's quite good breadth to the novel.

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 SupplementThe comparatively short novel is in fact the newcomer and literary interloper. By the late 19th century, novels were becoming more accessible and word counts were shrinking to the point where one literary critic in 1898 predicted mournfully “we shall end by reducing our romance to a geometrical diagram”. The present-day scenes move towards and then include two major events that look to the past, the anniversary-celebration of the publishing house and a major museum retrospective of Gustav's work.