The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson Review

A man receives an invoice of millions for the life he’s lived thus far, simply being alive! The man tries to understand his predicament by calling the company charging him and, amidst this Kafkaesque scenario, unexpectedly finds romance at the other end of the line - but what will happen to him if he can’t pay the bill?

Swedish author Jonas Karlsson’s novella The Invoice is an intriguing and original tale of existentialism that won’t say anything that’ll blow your hair back or have you on the edge of the seat, but is also quite pleasant and gently entertaining.

The premise is interesting up until he starts going to the company to speak to its investigators, then it becomes less compelling as you realise it’s just a faceless company like any other - the mystery is gone. The conversations between our nameless narrator and Maud, the woman handling his case over the phone, were convincingly realistic and I liked that Karlsson slowly developed their relationship to the point where you believed they might have feelings for each other - it was never rushed or melodramatic.

The main character’s life is unremarkable - he works part-time in a video store, he lives alone in a modest apartment, he has a friend, he enjoys the simple pleasures of life - but he likes it. It’s only when he’s forced to evaluate his life, like this company has done, that he becomes unhappy - comparison is the thief of joy, as Teddy Roosevelt said, and that’s exactly what happens. It leads to the best scene in the book when the narrator breaks down to Maud but also gets to the heart of what I think the story is really about: perception is everything when it comes to personal happiness.

The narrator is happy precisely because he’s not worried about how others view him - he lives the life he wants to live and finds pleasure in the smallest of things, like his favourite ice cream, or watching a good movie. The other characters in the story are unhappy because they’re focused on things like money or career advancement to the detriment of all else, and our narrator is only brought down to their level when he’s forced to see things from those limited perspectives as well. The narrator also has an Escher print on his wall, an artist who famously played with perspective.

It’s also about other things like being happy with what you have and recognising that, if you’re a Westerner living comfortably, most people’s lives are going to be worse than yours, all of which feed into the idea of perception.

The story doesn’t really develop after a certain point and becomes repetitive with the narrator either going into the company’s offices for another meeting or another long convo with Maud, and the ending is underwhelming but satisfying. So it’s not the most consistently engaging narrative, though it has enough going on to keep from becoming tedious. And it’s well-written and easy to read with a sweet, guileless message in keeping with the narrator’s character.

I didn’t love The Invoice but I enjoyed it enough to say it was worth reading and I’ll keep an eye out for more from this author. If you like Haruki Murakami’s novels, which also blends the mundane everyday with the surreal, you might enjoy Jonas Karlsson’s The Invoice too.