Mona is a novelist who gets nominated for a prestigious award in Sweden (not the Nobel), so goes there to be with her fellow nominees and enjoy Swedish hospitality, etc. Riveting stuff, eh?
I gather Pola (good luck pronouncing this in your head) Oloixarac’s novel is meant to be satirical or funny, in making light of the literary world or something, but it’s not. It’s not funny, it’s not entertaining, it’s not clever, it’s not anything good. What it is is boring. Very, very boring.
I don’t know what most people’s perceptions of the literary world is, but I’ve always thought the writers that get nominated for and win the big literary prizes are, more often that not, pretentious and dull, who produce pretentious and dull books. So it’s not exactly earth-shattering news to read a dreary story that says just that over and over.
The characters are from all over the world so I suppose the author is being inclusive of her criticism, that all literary writers everywhere are superficial and self-absorbed ninnies. And I do agree that, in a post #MeToo era where nobody is allowed to offend anybody, that art in general has become too watered down and, consequently, irrelevant. Not that artists need to be sleazy douchebags but they should be allowed to display a hint of an edgy personality and let that bleed over into their art without being censored/punished for it.
The novel goes nowhere until the final few pages when it attempts to be about something, and fails. Maybe a more talented writer could have produced something better along the same lines, but in Pola Oloixarac’s hands, she proves that even novels about how interminably monotonous and uninspired modern writers are, turn out to be just that themselves.
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