Jagannath opens on “Beatrice”, a story whose title ultimately holds the key to its message. What begins as a story of a man's love for an airship, slowly, steadily, yet surprisingly, becomes one of abuse. What follow is one of the best in the collection, “Some Letters for Ove Lindström”. In this story, the reader gets a first-hand view into a daughter's letters to her recently deceased, alcoholic father after years apart. On the uncanny hand, the reader is treated to liminal fairy tale like a sliver of the newest moon, resulting in touchingly sentimental piece that retains its mystery and longing. A small paean to rural domesticity and simple love, “Miss Nyberg and I” is a brief story, perhaps more anecdote, about a strange little animal that grows from the soil complementing a budding relationship.
More
reactionary than substantive, more Hollywood than human, “Rebecka”
is the creepy, twisted story about a woman attempting to deal with
from an ex via suicide. “Herr Cederberg” is a laughingly direct,
flash-in-the-pan telling of one man’s achieving the impossible.
Possible to be seen as a brief meditation on fantastika, it’s quite
interesting to reflect on the fact that you do not question Mr.
Cederberg's aircraft, but you do question the point at which he
ultimately arrives, leading to the question: at what point did I
suspend my disbelief?
Possibly about Tidbeck herself and a few months of summer at an
aunt’s cottage set aside for writing, “Brita's
Holiday Village” takes on subtly,
non-autobiographical twists as her creativity takes hold. A good,
ol’ fashioned horror story set in the countryside of Sweden, in
“Reindeer Mountain” a strange thing happens when a family goes to
claim its belongings before the government expropriates the property.
Rooted in Sweden and the family’s history, the child lets go of the
balloon.
A
brief piece, “Cloudberry Jam” is about giving birth and letting
go of
something ,
and the something is the story’s signature. In “Augusta Prima”,
readers are provided a fantastical croquette looking at the meaning
of time. What else to say? Closing out the collection is the
title story, “Jagannath”. Weird, weird, and WEIRD, it tells of a
young man's journey through an environment that is wholly biological.
About reproduction as a process, or at least a coordinated set set
of activities that produce life, the story sees people taking the
place of things like blood or nerves, trying to keep the mother
machine alive through it all.
In
the end, Jagannath is
very much a questing,
exploratory, open collection. Stories are told, but its more about
the journey than climax/resolution. They are not “storyteller’s
stories” which lure you in through twists and drama, more a writer
finding a voice inside herself through fiction. And while the whole
doesn't live up to the quality of “Sing”, there certainly is
enough to warrant reading, if not for the non-standard approach and
stance of most. It will be very interesting to see how Tidbeck
develops her voice through story in the future. There is a lot of
promise here.
The following are the thirteen stories collected in Jagannath:
Beatrice
Some Letters for Ove Lindström
Miss Nyberg and I
Rebecka
Herr Cederberg
Who Is Arvid Pekon?
Brita's Holiday Village
Reindeer Mountain
Cloudberry Jam
Pyret
Augusta Prima
Aunts
Jagannath
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