New Swedish Books, Autumn 2017 1
New Swedish Books 24 You’re Probably Pretty Speci
al But This Is as Close as We’ll Ever Get What’s a young woman to do when the image of August Strindberg unexpectedly appears in her underpants, or when the unthinkable happens and she knocks over an urn full of ashes at a funeral? The sudden shifts from calm normality to absurdity, breakneck accelerations from stillness to agitation, from seriousness to comedy, are both frightening and hilarious. Emma Asp tackles offbeat moments in her collection of short stories. She demonstrates that the reader’s ability to see the depths of despair, and to understand what it means to say goodbye or end a relationship, is reliant on profound darkness being never more than a knife’s edge away from the light. Quickly and effectively, Asp creates situations and characters that grab hold of the reader. The tone, seemingly breezy and teasing, yet at the same time direct, paradoxically makes the characters’ grief and sense of being lost more profound, and more hopeless. Emma Asp (b. 1982) You’re Probably Pretty Special But This Is as Close as We’ll Ever Get Publisher Norstedts www.norstedts.se Rights Norstedts peter.karlsson@norstedts.se Photo: Björn Wahlström