New Swedish Voices 1
Elin Grelsson (b. 1983) Writing modern working-cl
ass fiction isn’t easy. So often it is too political, too insistent, too black-andwhite. We can’t accuse Elin Grelsson of that. All her novels have been recognized as vital contributions to a long tradition of Swedish working-class fiction, none more so than her most recent book, Nothing Will Overgrow Me (‘Inget ska växa över mig’). Jenny, the book’s main character, moves to Stockholm from a fictional town in northern Sweden. She has the typical goals of someone trying to move up the socioeconomic ladder: fitting in in the big city, getting a high-status job, finding love. But is a perfect climb up the class ladder possible? Can Jenny get rid of her inheritance? Does she even want to? As Grelsson’s story unfolds, we recognize that Jenny feels a compulsion of sorts to succeed. If earlier Swedish working-class literature deals with surviving at the bottom of society, in its more modern guise focuses on getting up and out. On the surface at least, Jenny finds what she is looking for: a downtown apartment, a job in PR, a boyfriend with the right pedigree. Grelsson’s portrait of Jenny is a portrait of someone mustering the strength to break free, and nearly succeeding. Within this terrain, a larger story about class takes shape. Grelsson describes a gap between Jenny and her boyfriend that lies not in their characters or their abilities, but in their inheritances. Jenny seems unable to shake off that inheritance, and her new habitat becomes a reminder, not an erasure, of her past. Grelsson’s prose, spare and detached with a caustic subtext, suits the story she tells. Nothing Will Overgrow Me is a novel about surviving in a world that might never be your own. Bob Mattsson Nothing Will Overgrow Me 230 p., 2023, Natur & Kultur Rights: Nordin Agency All rights are available When Jenny leaves her sleepy hometown for Stockholm, she also leaves behind her uncomprehending parents and the younger sisters she once planned to conquer the world with. In Stockholm she meets Sebastian, smooth and urbane, to whom Jenny’s background seems like an exotic asset. Dogs on Main Street (‘Hundarna på huvudgatan’) 288 p., 2016, Atlas Rights: Nordin Agency All rights are available Johanna grows up with one foot in the labour movement, the other in the Church. She looks large-eyed at the world, filled with a desire to do good. When she fails at her selfimposed mission to keep an unaccompanied minor from being deported, her idealistic worldview crumbles. 5 New Swedish Voices Foto: Sofia Runarsdotter