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WORK TITLE: The White City
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/8/1976
WEBSITE:
CITY: Stockholm
STATE:
COUNTRY: Sweden
NATIONALITY: Swedish
http://ahlanderagency.com/authors/karolina-ramqvist/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karolina_Ramqvist * https://swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/the-white-city-karolina-ramqvist/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 8, 1976, in Stockholm, Sweden; married; children: three.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist. Arena magazine, Stockholm, Sweden, former editor-in-chief, Dagens Nyheter, daily newspaper in Sweden, contributor.
AWARDS:Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize, 2015, for Den Vita Staden.
WRITINGS
Also author of screenplay for short film Cupcake.
SIDELIGHTS
Swedish author Karolina Ramqvist is the author of four novels. An influential writer in her native country, she is also gaining an international following. Ramqvist’s debut novel, More Fire, is set in Jamaica and deals with themes of colonialism and racism as seen through the eyes of a young female Swedish journalist who has settled in the island nation. Despite is English-language title, this first novel is written in Swedish. Flickvännen (title means “The Girlfriend”) is Ramqvist’s second novel, and the third is the 2009 work, Alltings början (title means “The Beginning of Everything”). The author’s fourth novel is also the first to be translated into English: The White City, was originally published as Den vita staden. That novel earned Ramqvist Sweden’s prestigious Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize.
In a Literary Hub Website article, Ramqvist–married and the mother of three–remarked on her struggle to become a writer and to balance that profession with her desire to have children: “I always wanted to be an author, but I also wanted to have children. How those two things fit together is another common question. … My image of the writer was the early Romantic idea of the genius who through divine inspiration expressed their unique self in their works and thereby said something universal about existence. The fact that this idea didn’t allow for a girl to be a genius filled me with deep sorrow. As I got older, I started to think that maybe the genius also couldn’t be a woman with children. … I started to write even though I wasn’t supposed to.”
Flickvännen and Alltings början
In her second novel, Flickvännen, Ramqvist creates a portrait of a beautiful young woman who seeks financial security over an ethical life. Karin’s boyfriend John provides her with a luxurious lifestyle: an expensive home and car, and fine clothing. John is often gone for days at a time and Karin does not bother to ask about his “business,” as he is gangster and she is his trophy girlfriend. Karin’s family does not approve of this relationship; thus, she substitutes her actual family with the girlfriends of the other criminals in John’s mob. When the men are away on an operation, the women get together for social gatherings. But Karin cannot get rid of nagging worries, wondering if John will come back from his latest operation, if she will ever leave him, or if she wil actually have a child to bring up in such a life.
Speaking with Mickie Meinhardt in the online Rumpus, Ramqvist remarked that this is a “novel about worrying.” Ramqvist added: “I felt that that was a sentiment that I had huge experience in …, but I hadn’t really read a lot of novels about worrying. Worrying over someone else, waiting for someone. It has to do a lot with [Karin] trying to control her emotions. … It’s her way of trying to deal with the moral issues of being married to someone who does these things, and uses his money and lives this way.” Writing in the Swedish Book Review Online, Marie Allen noted of this novel: “Although the pace is slow and nothing much happens, Karolina Ramqvist manages to keep the portrait of Karin intriguing. But we are not allowed a full picture, just hints at why she has chosen this and why she stays. At the end of the book we are left wondering what a potential sequel would reveal.”
Alltings början is a coming-of-age novel set in Stockholm in the 1990s, featuring a young woman on the cusp of adulthood and dealing with issues of independence, friendship, and unequal relationships. Saga is sixteen and entering a new high school. Raised by a feminist mother, she has been taught to think for herself, and at this new school a different world opens for her, befriended by street-savvy Pauline. Both are more interested in partying at night rather than doing school work, and when Saga connects with hip Victor, she finds herself in a sexual power play. However, as Saga continues to grow and mature, it is Victor who yearns more for her. “The book is a literary analysis of power, gender, relationships, and fame,” noted online Swedish Book Review Online contributor B.J. Epstein, who added: “The author offers no answers and there is no clear end to anything. Instead, through Saga’s tale, Ramqvist challenges readers to think about their own selves, their own experiences and beliefs, and to consider whether they like what they find.”
The White City
Karin, from Flickvännen, is reprised in Ramqvist’s fourth novel, The White City. The world has been turned upside down for Karin, as her criminal boyfriend, John, is now gone and she is alone in the house he bought for her, but money is running out. The electricity and heat have been cut, and Karin is left with one major reminder of John, their baby, Dream. The girlfriends of the other mobsters who were once her friends are no longer there, and now her house is about to seized by the authorities. Karin must finally come to terms with her life and who she really is. As her world crumbles around her, Karin has to find a way to keep her infant daughter from harm in this dangerous new life.
This award-winning novel earned praise from Library Journal reviewer Susanne Wells, who commented: “With a character whose fear and anguish are palpable, this page-turner shows one young woman’s struggle to face harsh realities once the smoke clears.” Similarly, Booklist reviewer Annie Bostrom noted of The White City: “The ghostly Scandinavian setting and Karin’s closely narrated sense of impending doom, baby cooing patiently at her hip, make Swedish star Ramqvist’s English-language debut an atmospheric and
suspenseful read.” A Publishers Weekly writer also had a high assessment of the novel, observing: “Though Ramqvist withholds a great deal of information, especially regarding John, Karin’s emotional journey will have a lasting impact on readers.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic concluded: “As Karin, quite literally, works to keep Dream alive against a backdrop of violence and deception, readers root for both characters to find their way. Delicate and unsparing.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2017, Annie Bostrom, review of The White City, p. 42.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of The White City.
Library Journal, February 15, 2017, Susanne Wells, review of The White City, p. 83.
Publishers Weekly, December 19, 2016, review of The White City, p. 92.
ONLINE
9 Careers at Once, http://9careersatonce.blogspot.com/ (June 26, 2016), Jana Hilding, review of Flickvännen.
Ahlander Agency Website, http://ahlanderagency.com/ (September 11, 2017), “Karolina Ramqvist.”
His Futile Preoccupations, https://swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com/ (February 7, 2017), review of The White City.
Literary Hub, http://lithub.com/ (February 27, 2017), Karolina Ramqvist, “The Writer as Public Figure Vs. The Writer Who Actually Writes.”
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (September 22, 2017), Mickie Meinhardt, author interview.
Swedish Book Review, http://www.swedishbookreview.com/ (January, 2010), Marie Allen, review of Flickvännen; (January, 2013), B.J. Epstein, review of Alltings början.
Karolina Ramqvist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist.JPG
Karolina Ramqvist in 2013
Born November 8, 1976 (age 40)
Gothenburg, Sweden
Occupation Journalist
Citizenship Swedish
Annika "Karolina" Virtanen Ramqvist, (born 8 November 1976 in Gothenburg) is a Swedish journalist and author.[1]
Ramqvist has been the editor-in-chief for the magazine Arena and a columnist at Dagens Nyheter. She became known after she published a private letter from Ulf Lundell in the anthology book Fittstim.[2]
She is married to journalist Fredrik Virtanen.[3]
KAROLINA RAMQVIST is one of the most influential writers and feminists of her generation in Sweden. She had her breakthrough in 2009 with the critically acclaimed book The Girlfriend and in 2015 she was awarded the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize for her latest novel The White City.
2015
2012
2009
2002
Ramqvist has written four novels to date and had her breakthrough in 2009 with the critically acclaimed book The Girlfriend (Flickvännen), which she is currently adapting for the stage. Her 2012 generational coming-of-age-novel The Beginning (Alltings början) rocketed into instant cult status and placed Ramqvist in the national spotlight as a powerful literary voice with the ability to provoke quiet yet fierce questions rather than provide loud and easy answers. In her skillful hands, contemporary issues of sexuality, commercialization, isolation and belonging become highly charged and, at the same time, completely unaffected. Her style is at once stripped down and lyrical, suspenseful yet meditative.
One of Sweden’s most interesting writers.
EXPRESSEN (SWEDEN)
In 2014, Ramqvist made her screenwriting debut with the award-winning short film Cupcake. Her greatly anticipated latest novel, The White City (Den vita staden) was published in March, 2015 and was awarded the prestigious P.O. Enquist Literary Prize in September of the same year.
She lives in Stockholm with her husband and three children.
Karolina Ramqvist doesn’t offer solutions, quite the opposite. Her books are artistic explorations of power dynamics.
QUOTE:
is a novel about worrying. I felt that that was a sentiment that I had huge experience in [laughs], but I hadn’t really read a lot of novels about worrying. Worrying over someone else, waiting for someone. It has to do a lot with her trying to control her emotions.
It’s her way of trying to deal with the moral issues of being married to someone who does these things, and uses his money and lives this way.
“THE BOOK I SAID I WOULD NEVER WRITE”: TALKING WITH KAROLINA RAMQVIST
BY MICKIE MEINHARDT
September 22nd, 2017
Karolina Ramqvist is a big deal in Sweden, and now she’s arrived in the US. Ramqvist made her English debut in February with the translation of her novel The White City. Already a bestseller in Sweden, the book is the winner of the prestigious Per Olov Enquist Literary Prize and has been praised by Siri Hustvedt, Kirkus Review, and many more.
The White City has all the elements of a thriller, delivered in controlled and rapturous prose that makes it move almost cinematically. The thin book traces a few days in the life of Karin, last name unknown, the girlfriend of a high-level crime boss who is killed. Karin is left alone with her six-month-old daughter, Dream, faced with investigations and no source of income, and has to fight her way out—of her situation, and of a black hole of despair and grief. Tightly wound in Karin’s emotions and thoughts, the book cycles with her through all the levels of grief, and all the fight-or-flight responses of a mother in peril. The White City is a sequel to Ramqvist’s first novel, The Girlfriend (2009), but stands on its own. It is about the ferocious capabilities of women under pressure, and the ties that bind them—physical, emotional, and circumstantial.
A journalist, former editor of Arena magazine, and now fourth-time novelist, Ramqvist is studied, sharp, and has the kind of carefully quick mind you’d expect after reading her prose. I spoke with her at a cafe in the Lower East Side, New York, when she was in town for PEN World Voices Festival, about The White City, The Girlfriend, their differences, and about the idea of a writer’s persona out in the world versus a just being a writer, writing.
***
The Rumpus: The White City is a continuation of your first novel, The Girlfriend, which I wanted to read and was sad to find isn’t translated into English.
Karolina Ramqvist: Yes, it came out quite a while ago and is only out in Scandinavia and a few other countries. The White City is a continuation of the same story but I wanted it to stand for itself, and because I wrote The Girlfriend it never can in Sweden. So I’m happy when it did well [in the US] because that was my first confirmation that it could.
Rumpus: If you read Swedish you can get the whole backstory, but I can’t. I wondered, while reading, at what English readers might be missing. When writing The Girlfriend, did you think there would be a book two?
Ramqvist: Not at all. When it came out, a lot of publishers asked me if there would be a sequel. At the time, there were agents with that commercial eye asking for this very specific Nordic crime thing.
Rumpus: I guess that would have been around the time of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Ramqvist: Yes, and that made me very uneager to write anything more on it. But then I had a book come out between The Girlfriend and The White City; it’s called The Beginning of Everything. The title is, loosely translated, from a painting by Gustave Courbet, L’Origine Du Monde. [The book is] about feminism, a coming of age story. I wouldn’t say it’s autobiographical, but I used a lot of facts from my own life. I share a lot of circumstances with the main character. She’s my age, grew up in the same town, went to the same nightclubs. You follow her from when she’s fourteen to when she’s twenty-three. She wants to become a writer and uncover the state she lives in, find out about life and men, go into the world and describe it. Her mom is a radical 1968 feminist, so she’s born into it and has to challenge those ideas within feminism.
Rumpus: To find it for herself.
Ramqvist: Yes. That book came out in 2012 and was very well-received. I had to do so many interviews, and I was asked what my experiences with [the subject matter] were. At that time in Sweden the whole autofiction thing was very big, it seemed as if every novel that came out was really the writer’s own story. So I was very fed up with getting those questions. Especially because they’re questions people don’t pose to male writers as often as female writers, because we have this idea that men write about life and the bigger sorts of questions.
Rumpus: And women only write about “women’s issues.”
Ramqvist: Yes! And because there was the picture of myself on the cover, the publishing house didn’t want to use the painting; for me it was almost ironic. I don’t think anyone else got it, though. [Laughs] The Beginning of Everything was my third novel, and the first time I was really confronted with the writer as a figure, and with the split between being a person who is writing and being a writer in the world. I discovered people have this idea of writers as people who sit in studios or on stage talking and not really of them just sitting in their pajamas at their desk working. I ended up writing a piece about that, about that conflict, for Lit Hub.
So while I was doing all these promotional interviews, I was at my house in the countryside with my family, and I had decided I was only going to be doing that, and that I’d enjoy some free time. This whole thing of becoming the writer persona instead of a person who is writing was so disturbing to me. So I decided I had to start writing something, something that wasn’t going to be published. I’ve always had tons of ideas. I have almost like a bucket list of things I want to write. It’s a little disturbing, almost like a hoarder’s syndrome, you just collect them. I thought I shouldn’t write those, but something I had never thought of. And there was a book that I had said I would never write, a follow-up to The Girlfriend. So I just spur of the moment took to my computer, it was early morning, and thought: Okay, Karin, what’s happened to her? Say it’s been five years. Where did she end up? It was a way for me to handle the whole situation and get back into the writing.
Rumpus: An exercise.
Ramqvist: Yes. At first it had a different title, it’s not really translatable, bytet, which is like the change or the switch. In Swedish it’s used for a small child, or a loot within crime, it’s a very broad term. It was a change for me in the way I viewed the character, and also The Girlfriend is written in present tense and is more of a monologue and contained. It takes place over only three days where she’s in her luxury villa that her boyfriend or husband [John] bought or paid for.
Rumpus: The same house as in The White City?
Ramqvist: Yes. In The Girlfriend the house is perfect, it’s almost like she’s playing house a little bit. Very infatuated with surfaces and materials, and with the idea of being a woman, and that’s part of why she was drawn to this world. Because from a Swedish perspective, or from my Swedish perspective, gender roles are so deconstructed. But within certain areas, for instance crime, and the gangster culture, you’ll have very obvious gender roles.
Rumpus: Like “this is my woman.”
Ramqvist: Yes, which is something you won’t really see. Within the middle class, where I come from in Sweden, we tend not to talk about it. We tend to really stay away from everything that is like that.
Rumpus: The gender roles aren’t clearly defined, or at least not talked about in that way.
Ramqvist: Exactly. So I think Karin had this longing to be that, to do that play. That book is very different from The White City, and at the same time, it’s the same universe, same characters. I don’t know about here, but in Sweden it’s very rare that books have a long lifetime in bookstores. I’ve been very fortunate because all of my books are out now. I think The White City made people want to read The Girlfriend.
Rumpus: That was one of my questions, because I haven’t been able to read The Girlfriend. Part of The White City’s rapture is this calm-before-the-storm aura that permeates it. Karin is both dead inside and very alive, in a well of despair and also very anxious. Here Karin is so grief-stricken and afraid, and I was curious what she was like before, and how writing her in this way differed in writing her before.
Ramqvist: The Girlfriend is a novel about worrying. I felt that that was a sentiment that I had huge experience in [laughs], but I hadn’t really read a lot of novels about worrying. Worrying over someone else, waiting for someone. It has to do a lot with her trying to control her emotions. She has all these different strategies for it, with the house, her clothing, her makeup, her body, how she takes care of everything. That’s to soothe herself, because she’s so worried about what’s happening when John is out working. And she’s also together with her friends because they’re in the same situation as her. They come for dinner and end up partying together. The difference is also that, in The Girlfriend, many readers might have been provoked because Karin is very superior. It’s her way of trying to deal with the moral issues of being married to someone who does these things, and uses his money and lives this way.
Rumpus: And she’s estranged from her family because of that, right?
Ramqvist: She’s about to be. She’s still talking to her sisters and her mom. Her mom is also this very Swedish 1968 feminist, social democrat, and they have very strong ideas about the collective and responsibilities and moral ideas. [Karin is] refraining from all of that.
Rumpus: She and John have their world and their money, they’re so far apart from everyone.
Ramqvist: Yes. She’s trying to diminish her own feelings of guilt. To spread the blame. She’ll say, Oh, what about someone living with someone working at the immigration office who’s deporting people? What kind of responsibility do they have, too? She’s dealing with all these moral issues. In a way, some might interpret it as she’s trying to convince herself. So [The Girlfriend] is a lot more set in her inner world. She’s in the house and also very compacted within herself with all these questions.
Rumpus: But The White City is like that as well. We leave the house here and there, but we’re so in her head, it’s a very close third person narrative and the whole book takes on her mental state. If she hadn’t been dealing with her emotions prior, in this book she’s now only dealing with them, only feeling, in a very deep and specific way.
Ramqvist: I love that, because that’s how I thought of it. The Girlfriend is also told in first person. In The White City, I wanted to take a small step away from [Karin] and look at her from a different angle. With The Girlfriend, I think a lot of people felt really angry at her. They wanted to walk into the novel and shake her, like, “Get out of there! What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” Because she’s this privileged, white, middle-class woman, she’s got all the possibilities in the world. What was interesting to me was that, here in Sweden, the equality of the sexes is very advanced and we have a situation where she can actually do what she wants. So that was a conflict. When The White City came out, I think some readers were happy she was finally thrown down from the pedestal. I got questions of whether I wrote it to punish her. There was a class reading of it, too. She used to live this luxury life and now she’s down.
I wanted to write about weaknesses and pains. Also what happened when I started to write it, where I live in Stockholm is this very quaint neighborhood, kinda of boho-chic area. You have all these coffee shops where people sit, like they do here, with their laptops, and some might go to the restroom and leave their phone and wallet and everything. And a few years ago people started to come from Romania to Sweden and beg for money. They’re EU immigrants who travel around to different countries to sustain themselves and send back money to their families to build houses. That was a complete shift in the public space because even just two streets away we’d always had people doing that, but not in my neighborhood. But I was very interested in this act of begging for help, being helpless and trying to survive and those things. I wanted to know how we would view [Karin] knowing who she is and where she’s coming from, and can we still feel empathetic for her in this situation that she’s in right now. I think in that way I was using the backstory even though I was trying to make something completely new.
Rumpus: I want to shift to talking about some of the characters, starting with Dream. What an amazing pairing. I enjoyed her so much because of the repetition of the breastfeeding. This is a dreamy book, in style, and I don’t think we would have had any sense of how much time was passing without that need for regular breastfeeding and that attachment. Was that conscious?
Ramqvist: I don’t know how conscious it was but I saw it happening and realized I could use it. I was hoping for that reaction and I haven’t actually heard anyone say it before. I said it once to someone. That’s very perceptive that you picked up on that.
Rumpus: Otherwise, she would wake up and we would have no idea how many days had passed. And, too, that physical pain of the breasts always swelling, it’s very body-oriented. Corporeal.
Ramqvist: I think I was attracted to the idea of her body being sort of like an engine.
Rumpus: She’s keeping Dream alive, but Dream is also keeping her alive. If she didn’t have to deal with Dream, would she just collapse? You get the sense she might.
Ramqvist: Yes.
Rumpus: Even though she didn’t particularly want to be a mother in the first place—now that she is, she’s really going to be. Did you plan to end the book the way you did? I certainly didn’t expect the focus to come around to this friendship [between Karin and Therese].
Ramqvist: No, not at all. It just sort of happened. I’m more into style and form and language than plot.
Rumpus: Female friendship novels are a hot ticket item these days. I wondered if that was on your mind at all.
Ramqvist: I think it probably was, subconsciously. Also, The Girlfriend was going to be a feature film; I don’t know if it still is, but I wrote a manuscript for it. And in that novel, [Karin and Therese’s] relationship is so intense and loving. So I think it was my own urge for them to get back together.
Rumpus: This book is very painful, up until the very end. So I liked this idea that women are the only ones who can save each other, though I don’t know if that was your intention.
Ramqvist: I think I had that sisterhood ideal somewhere deep down. Also, because they’re so different, these two characters, there was something catalystic about them. There’s something about them getting back together, making each other change things and wake up. But yes, female friendship can be a very tricky. It’s so overused, in a way. And we have this idea that women should be good and be good friends, and [Karin and Therese] are good friends, but I was a bit bothered by that idea. It’s not always the way it has to be.
Rumpus: It’s complicated. They can be as bad as they can be good. There’s a tremendous capacity for negative power. You see that with them, how it’s soured but love is still there. You really don’t think Therese is going to help her. The end is quite a surprise.
Ramqvist: That’s maybe the one thing that’s less surprising to readers who read The Girlfriend.
Rumpus: When you were writing this, did you have the impulse to write more of the backstory or give more details? It’s very spare.
Ramqvist: I wrote it that way from the beginning, but it became even more so along the way. The Girlfriend is more flow-y, and the novel that I wrote before is very different. More wordy and comforting. More easygoing. A good read. [Laughs] So I wanted to boil this one down to the essential parts, to put everything I had into every sentence. And also to work with the white page, the empty page. It was a way of practicing writing in this style. When I’m going to start a novel, I have very strong feelings about the language and the form and how it’s going to be written, but I have a hard time figuring out what it is I want to reach and what I’m trying to get to. I tried to sit and write and see when that would happen, when I would recognize it. How the language should feel, what the tone would be. I enjoyed writing it in that spare way.
Rumpus: Did that come from it originally being a practice endeavor?
Ramqvist: Yes. I would do these snapshots or small scenes in the beginning.
Rumpus: How did that idea of white space fit with the rest of the book? Why that form?
Ramqvist: It might have had to do with the fact that I knew that she was a person or character who people have a lot of different thoughts about. Who people were a bit angry with. I wanted to put her up on a scene, to sort of just lay her out. Almost like an object, a thing that would just be on display. I wanted to write in a way so the reader can add their own ideas. Do half of the job. [Laughs] That was the first time I tried to incorporate it into the form. I’ve always tried to write that way but using white space I could finally make it more tangible.
Rumpus: At what point did you realize it wasn’t just practice?
Ramqvist: It took awhile. It was summer, and I remember having dinner with my editor in February and she was like, “So can I read this?” So maybe for eight months I was just doing it for myself.
Rumpus: When you got to the point where you realized it was a book, how much changed then?
Ramqvist: Not a ton. But I had to do a lot of research. I had to navigate a lot. There were the most changes made within the plot. Using small details to make everything fit. As I said, I’m not really plot-driven, so I had to go back and be like, okay, someone is actually going to read this and I have to add more. Especially with the whole premise that she’s going to lose her house. Because I hadn’t done any research on how that would work. I was so anxious because I didn’t want to change too much. I wanted it to be able to work but still be realistic. That idea in there of “follow the money,” even though there’s not a lot actually in the book that deals with that, crime investigation and tax laws, I still had to read so much. I figured out there were two scenarios how the government could take the house away from her and one of them could be applicable to her story. So I fortunately didn’t have to change a lot but I did have to go through the story and be very careful.
Rumpus: It can be frustrating. A lot of that research doesn’t end up going into a novel but you still have to do it. I think as fiction writers we want to just make up a scenario and be like, “This sounds good, right?” But you know someone—probably you—has to fact-check it.
Ramqvist: And you don’t want to have to change something that you really want to have in the book just because of real-world circumstances! [Laughs]
Rumpus: It feels frustrating when there’s this whole world you’ve created but then there’s one pesky little thread that ties you back to reality.
Ramqvist: Yes. Actually, to me it was really interesting to get into that subject because in Sweden it’s so new. We haven’t had this way of dealing with organized crime. Only in the last ten years or so. The Girlfriend was a novel I wanted to for maybe ten years, but I couldn’t get to it. I just knew I wanted to write about this girlfriend. It wasn’t until I realized she was going to be very materialistic and loving shoes and clothing and handbags and interior decoration that I got it. It was a way of seeing that she’s like me, she’s like anyone else. We tend to talk about this criminal world as if it is another world. And especially in Sweden, because we all live with very strong ideas of our society and how it’s working. I was very interested in all these little bridges between these two worlds and all the angles where we’re all the same. This “follow the money” thing is so good for that because that’s where the authorities look at what people consume, what relationships they have, they go after relatives and family. So that’s where these worlds meet.
And also, in Sweden that whole operation is very controversial because you have this list, which is in the book. It’s a list that a lot of people think doesn’t exist, but it really does. Usually I think it contains about a hundred names. They don’t have to be very high up, like in Karin’s case, but they have to have key positions within criminal gangs. It’s a tool for the authorities. If someone’s on it, the authorities don’t have to follow certain amendments. They can call and ask about this person in other agencies, which would be impossible to do otherwise. It sidetracks a lot of laws, which is very controversial, of course. In that sense, we can question the authorities themselves, who they are and what they’re doing. These things become a bit complicated, especially when it comes to going after a person who isn’t guilty of anything except loving someone. It was really interesting to look at things that way.
Rumpus: You’re a journalist as well, so I wondered if the overall subject matter was something you’d investigated.
Ramqvist: Not at all. But I have a friend who knows a bit about it, so I was able to ask her. Also, I really wanted Karin to lose her home. We have the immigration debate right now, and the idea of a home or a place to be safe in is big, so I really wanted to take her home away from her and see. Because I realized oh, this is a thing that actually happens now. Even though the book isn’t really set in Sweden, it’s more set in this unknown place.
Rumpus: I was curious about that.
Ramqvist: It could be Sweden; it could be somewhere else. But I was very glad when I found out it was actually happening so I could use it. I thought someone should make a documentary about “follow the money.” I’m not going to write a book about it but you could really do that, it’s so interesting. And you have all these gray areas in it. I’m very attracted to gray areas.
Rumpus: As we can tell in the book. Who are you reading right now?
Ramqvist: I’m reading Rikki Ducornet, her novel Netsuke. It’s about a psychoanalyst who sleeps with his patients to save them, it’s very good. Reading a lot for a Swedish thing. I never used to do this, but for work now I’m reading like, every novel that comes out. All debuts. I never used to read Swedish contemporary fiction that way, so I was so surprised. This is my second year doing it, but I’ll be doing it until I’m fifty-five. [Laughs]
Rumpus: Wow. Contractually obligated?
Ramqvist: No, it’s a great thing to be able to do. I received [the award], and then I got the opportunity to do it. I get to meet with other writers and talk about fiction so I said yes. But now I’m reading a lot of Swedish writers! It’s different, because I was used to reading books that I have and classics and translated works. I read a lot of French authors. I love Marie Darrieussecq. If you haven’t read her, you definitely should. And also Margueritte Duras. I used her book, Writing, a lot in my Lit Hub essay.
Rumpus: Are you finding, in reading so many of your contemporaries, that it’s influencing you at all?
Ramqvist: I’m sometimes very surprised. Very often I look at a book with no expectations and then it turns out to be something completely different. I’m really glad to be able to read this much poetry, because Swedish poetry is very strong and great and I didn’t really know that before. Also with the fiction, I was very taken aback of how publishing works. Sometimes you can see that an idea is great, but the actual writing doesn’t really work. You can see the original promise within the book but that is not really fulfilled along the way. I think that’s a great thing with publishing. You can be a writer and do a brilliant novel then you can do a few not so brilliant ones. That’s very comforting to me in a way. When I first started to read so much I was a bit disappointed, but then I realized this is what it’s all about. If, like me, you’ve been reading mostly translated fictions and classics and books you used to love, then you’re just getting the best. But when you stand in front of this river of what’s out now, it’s a completely different thing. At first I was a bit saddened and confused, but then I realized that this is the way it works. It’s so comforting, to be in that space. I think literature is this counter-course. We’re allowed to be slow and not marketable or perfect. We’re allowed to have a different concept of time.
Rumpus: I think there comes a moment when you’re reading a lot of contemporary fiction where you can find something redeemable in very book, even if you didn’t like the book itself. You think, well, it’s the effort that counts. And I don’t know if other arts are as forgiving.
Ramqvist: No! That can be very hard, too. One of the feelings I got was, it’s such hard work, why do you even want to write? What is the point of this, when the writing isn’t magical or nothing happens on the page? But then I realized, because I found one book that I loved, that one book out of two hundred during the year, maybe that’s the right amount. You all can come back and give it another try. It goes back to what I was thinking about in my essay, the writer as figure or the writer who writes.
Rumpus: Are you thinking about future, or next steps?
Ramqvist: I’m always very ambivalent, so I’m torn between being just a writer and going to a place and writing. I think I did eighty talks and lectures last year, and most of them were on the subject of this book and the impossibilities of even talking about a novel. Especially when you’re like me and you want the reader to create the novel, I don’t want to stand in front of it. It’s a funny and strange situation. But I have this relationship with social media that it’s very odd. I have like 10,000 followers on Twitter but I feel so weird writing there. I don’t really know what to put there and how to handle that. But now that I’ve done my last talk on this essay, I’m thinking maybe I should look into this social media thing again. Or maybe the resistance is a good thing. I’m a very comfortable person. I’m a writer because I wanted to withdraw from everything else. So maybe it’s a good thing for me to get out to these talks, to be more active, not so controlled. I’m very much in my own head and have a hard time seeing myself from outside. I was a terrible journalist because I would just write for myself and not consider the reader.
When you’re a presenter at a book fair and they have these small talks and you have like ten a day where you have to talk, it feels so exhausting and so silly. But then, every time I’ve been to one, after like two days, I discover there is something in it that I find that I didn’t know before, or that I knew and had forgotten, about the work I’m talking about. So there’s always something I think to be found in this. I suppose that has to do a lot with how you see yourself as a person and the space you want to be in. So when you get used to writing novels and doing it the way you want to do it, it’s also very scary to write in other contexts.
Rumpus: To consider the public when you didn’t before.
Ramqvist: Exactly.
***
Author photograph © Jasmine Storch.
QUOTE:
I started to write even though I wasn’t supposed to.
I always wanted to be an author, but I also wanted to have children. How those two things fit together is another common question,
My image of the writer was the early Romantic idea of the genius who through divine inspiration expressed their unique self in their works and thereby said something universal about existence. The fact that this idea didn’t allow for a girl to be a genius filled me with deep sorrow. As I got older, I started to think that maybe the genius also couldn’t be a woman with children.
THE WRITER AS PUBLIC FIGURE VS. THE WRITER WHO ACTUALLY WRITES
KAROLINA RAMQVIST ON THE STRUGGLE TO BALANCE SUCCESS AND MEANING
February 27, 2017 By Karolina Ramqvist Share:
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I’m supposed to be writing a speech about my new novel, The White City. It’s a March morning, no sun. I’m standing by my secretary desk. I’ve shut the doors to the rest of the apartment and have been on the verge of sitting down to begin, but each time I tried someone called for me: my husband, my son, or one of my daughters. I can still hear them out in the hall.
It’s impossible to speak to someone about a book one has written. I’m supposed to be writing, but this is the only sentence inside me. There are mere days before the book comes out. A number of so-called “author appearances” have been scheduled at bookstores and libraries around the country. I have to figure out what to say—draft a talk about this novel that I can give not once but repeatedly. It’s paralyzing. I can barely bring myself to make even this tiny movement: my fingers tapping the keys as I write this text.
The kids are making noise in the hall again; the front door slams behind them. Silence. I breathe through my nose and think of the meditation techniques I should be practicing. I think about what Virginia Woolf said in her speech before the National Society for Women’s Service in London in January 1931: that all the great women novelists in England in the 1800s did not have children. Those words strike me occasionally.
I’ve written talks like this before; I’ve often agonized over the notion of having to speak about a book, especially before hardly anyone outside of the book business has had a chance to read it. To hold a talk, one could say, instead of the book. (I can’t get away from the fact that this is how it feels.) A talk that will never cover everything. How am I supposed to do that? Who am I even to do that? This attitude has been interpreted as stage fright or a desire to keep a low profile, but what frightens me isn’t the stage or the public eye but the risk of destroying what I understand the novel to be, that which is still open and not-yet-realized, as it must be for the reader.
When a book has just been published, the author is asked many questions. It’s usually difficult to respond, and there might not be any answers. One of the most common questions—and yet it always blindsides me—is “Why do you write?” When I was young I spent a lot of time trying to answer that question, but however I tried I couldn’t come up with an answer that I knew to be true. It made me feel lousy, like someone who’d never be a writer because I didn’t even know why I wanted to be one.
My image of the writer was the early Romantic idea of the genius who through divine inspiration expressed their unique self in their works and thereby said something universal about existence. The fact that this idea didn’t allow for a girl to be a genius filled me with deep sorrow. As I got older, I started to think that maybe the genius also couldn’t be a woman with children. I had begun to write, and my writing was already problematic to those in my immediate circle, a threat and a disappointment, an attempt to shape my life around my fears and my inability to participate in it. I didn’t have children then, but I had boyfriends and friends, and countless demands were implicit to the questions they posed. Why do you have to go away to write, why can’t you write here, why do you have to write?
Back then, I wasn’t surrounded by other people who wrote, and I wasn’t really surrounded by people who read, and my writing couldn’t have been considered work because the payment wasn’t commensurate with my efforts and the time it took. (I mean, it still isn’t, but nowadays that isn’t as clear.) Reading Virginia Woolf at the time, I didn’t see the glaring similarities between me and the women from the past about whom she was writing, who started writing because pen and paper were easy to get a hold of and writing was an activity that could be done discreetly. But later, when I got to know other women writers who tried to live with men—men, I should add, who didn’t share their values—I understood that I’d never been alone in being called sick because I’d rather write than live with and make love with them. These men hated that we wrote. They hated how the writing took us, hated it for its ability to bear witness to the world and for the fact that it would remain long after they themselves were gone.
I always wanted to be an author, but I also wanted to have children. How those two things fit together is another common question, and I’d wondered about it myself. How would that be possible? In equality-minded Sweden, it’s a given that women shouldn’t have to choose between work and starting a family, but I saw children as a potential threat to my writing. And motherhood with its demands is really a sort of antithesis to being a writer. But many women also live with the idea of being perpetually available to their men, and when I think about it now, it’s so clear that children were never the hurdle for writing—men were. I could only start writing books once I stopped making myself available to a man’s many ever-changing needs. But I can’t include this in a talk or make this my answer to how I became an author.
*
An author appearance is a meeting between the author and the readers who share time and a space and in this way it differs from our usual meeting, the one in which the reader sits alone with the text and completes it by reading. I like our in-person meeting best when it reminds me of the latter. But this latter meeting can occur when we’re in the same room, too, for instance during a Q&A in an auditorium when a member of the audience shares his reading of the novel in a way that allows us to glimpse our usual space of encounter: the true space of reading. I like when this happens; experiencing the closeness between strangers that arises when we recall the fellowship to which we are accustomed, but can’t achieve as long as we are in the same room speaking to each other.
It’s impossible to speak to someone about a book one has written. Marguerite Duras wrote this sentence in her penultimate book Writing. She writes that authors are contradictory and utterly incomprehensible and that “a book is the unknown, it’s the night, it’s closed off, and that’s that.” Until this novel, which I’m now supposed to “say” something about, all of my books were texts that I’d borne a long time. They sat inside me as if in storage or ran parallel to each other like long threads, in constant conversation about what should be written and how. This novel came to be in a completely different way.
*
It was the summer of 2012. I had just finished my third novel, Alltings början (The Beginning of Everything), my husband and I had gone out to our summer cottage with the children, and I wasn’t supposed to be writing. I was only meant to do interviews and be on vacation. The publisher’s publicity department had let me know that there seemed to be an early interest in the book. This delighted me, of course. Not only that, I’d received a few advances from foreign publishers, my youngest daughter was to start pre-school in the fall, I had a grant, and would be able to start working on something new.
Finding the time to write no longer felt impossible. I should have been happy. The novel was to come out in August, a little more than three years since the last one, which corresponded to the idea of a real author’s rate of production. Now and then, I walked around outside with the phone pressed to my ear answering journalists’ questions about the book, and I tried to say things that would be compelling and relevant and make it seem read-worthy. (Write-worthy?) Photographers drove out to the cottage to take pictures, I had brought lipstick with me and a blazer that I never otherwise had there and I stood in places around the garden and up by the bilberry sprigs in the forest and once in the middle of a lake atop a very leaky old wooden trampoline.
And in the same way that I put on the blazer, I dressed myself up in the role of the author, perpetually ready to speak about my book. I wasn’t supposed to be writing that summer, I was supposed to be having time off, going to the beach with the children, playing with them and cooking food and taking walks in the forest, and being available for the marketing of the book. That’s how the authorial split appeared for me. I had read about it and heard other writers discuss it, but now for the first time I could feel it. I had become the writer, but who was this writer? It cut through me with full force, the cleft that characterizes what we call the writing profession, and which has become so obvious it can be elusive. In one of the Empson Lectures in Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, Margaret Atwood reminds us of the epigram that she keeps on her bulletin board, one that usually brings me as much comfort as it seems to amuse my audience: Wanting to meet an author because you like their work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. Atwood describes the cleft as a dividing line between the person who eats cereal at breakfast and drives off to have their car washed and the other much more articulate shadow-being who lives in the same body and “when no one is looking, takes it over and uses it to commit the actual writing.” But the split that opened up in me that summer was between these two beings and the writer with a capital W, who appears when the writing is done. The duck, if you will.
If the writer-genius I once idealized was substantial and authentic, then the actual writer was a whole set of personalities that were constantly circling each other. The role of the writer is often not considered a “role” because performing as a writer is close to hand. The one who writes sits alone with her text and works hour after hour, year after year, alone with the words, searching for the word inside the word and the shine that will arise from them. It’s a solitary act, like reading, and that, like reading, might lead to a book. It’s difficult work that also isn’t really work, neither a part of working life or the market economy. But the question is whether the writer with a capital W, her body and life and experiences, have become more in demand than what she has written.
I became a writer in other’s eyes that summer and also a Writer. A person who appears on the covers of magazines, on TV-sofas or on stages to talk about the book she has written, just like I’m supposed to be preparing to do. Or like I’m trying to avoid doing?
I told one of the reporters that I’ve always wanted to write about what isn’t brought to the fore. That which is hidden. It was a statement I was able to make without feeling that I’d have to take it back in the next sentence or object to later. I had a hard time summarizing my authorship in the ways that I was invited to do in interviews—I understood, in spite of it all, that I was to think of it as an invitation—but with some reluctance I could see how the books were creating their own kingdom. They appeared, among other ways, in relation to each other.
When my novel Flickvännen (The Girlfriend) came out in 2009, I was often asked if I was going to write a sequel. The question seemed related to a question asked of many Scandinavian novelists—if they might not be planning on writing a crime novel—and each time I answered that no, I absolutely was not. The idea was alien to me; I didn’t understand the point. I was also asked about my personal experience of life with a gangster and what it was like to wait at home for him to come back from a job, like the main character Karin. As if what I had written were a product of my life rather than a literary work. For instance, a TV producer called me several times in hopes of having me on his show to talk about what it’s like for those women. I said that I couldn’t, I could only speak on behalf of the protagonist in The Girlfriend. What I had written was a novel, it was fiction. On the other end of the line, the producer fell silent. “But,” he said eventually, “how else could you know that this is how it happened?”
This fixation on reality can be disheartening for a writer, but you could also look at it like this: it’s not that reality is so dominant, novels are. It’s the novel that perforates reality, and not the other way around. At the same time, it’s also a way of talking about—and with—the Writer. A number of journalists who called that summer also really wanted to come out to the cabin. One couldn’t possibly do the authorship justice unless one sat down with the writer and talked, they said. But why would that make it possible? I am not my novel. I can only do it injustice.
The more I tried to talk about my book, the more often I was struck by the impossibility of doing precisely that (an impossibility that differed from writing’s many impossibilities), the more irritated I grew with the Writer in me who insisted on trying (even though I knew she had her reasons).
But it was also something else. Was this a new way of talking about literature? In past interviews, The Girlfriend was called a “successful novel”, and I was called a “successful author.” The focus wasn’t only on the writer as a person, but the writer as a successful person. A big magazine article no longer seemed able to be about a writer’s books because they were good, they also had to have caught the attention of the media and be liked by many. This could be understood as a consequence of the changing conditions of cultural journalism and literary criticism, but also as the writer as a character being pulled into the neoliberal narrative of individual strength and independence, which has become the media-society’s big story and that lends itself, as literature does, to being about what it means to be human, but in this story weakness and ambivalence are only addressed in order to highlight strength and certitude. It was a lie that felt new and became particularly ridiculous when applied to the writer.
So I did the only straightforward thing. I started to write even though I wasn’t supposed to. Even though the point was for me to have “free time” and only do some interviews. I started writing because writing is something I can’t help but do, but also because I thought that it would save me from the Writer, save me from the role of the author and the human ideal that was beginning to flow into me like undrinkable water. It was also flowing into the person who was adjacent to writing and into the one-who-writes, who for all she knew about hardship and impossibility should have known to build a dam to keep the water out.
Right then I wanted to write something that wouldn’t be published, something for which I would never stand on a stage or a leaky old wooden trampoline in the middle of a lake, never try to talk about, never try to say. Because another recurring question is of course “What do you want to say with this book?” And the answer: “I don’t want to say anything; I wanted to write what it says in the book exactly as it is written there.”
And in the same way that I’d long had a store of books inside me to write, there was one I was never going to write. So I picked that one. I started writing the sequel to The Girlfriend, which in that moment I believed would never be published. I reached for that story as though it were a rope tossed to me in cold water, and it became something to hold on to so I could get back to what I wanted. When I stepped into Karin’s house again, she was still there, different to the person I had left behind in The Girlfriend. Her worst fears had come to pass—everything that everyone, those closest to her, but also the reader with a voice of reason, and me with mine, had warned her about. What we expect to happen to girls who get involved with gangsters. She lost everything. I was asked if I did this to punish her.
*
For the one who writes, the writer is far away. The writer is expected to have answers, the one who writes is dedicated to writing and sitting alone with questions. It’s a cleft that runs between the quick and the slow. The profitable and unprofitable. What everyone is waiting for and what no one is asking for. What wants to come out and that which shirks. To write is to turn to face the world while turning away from it.
Like the writer, readers come later, when the writing is done. The book materializes in the reader’s hands, in her gaze. Letter by letter, word by word, it carved out a space inside me and through my body, it emerges in the space inside her. The reader can point out what the writer has forgotten or didn’t realize was in the book, perhaps something that provided the first impulse to write it and that belongs to our shared world. And in her reading, she creates the text, but only through reading the book can the reader have it and only through writing it, exactly as it is written, can I “say” what I want to say with it. We can’t get around the solitary and unnecessary act of all these words.
Of course the question comes up again. Why do you write? But to whom do I owe the answer? There is no answer, and I probably knew that all along, but maybe I didn’t dare say it until now: I write to write.
Maybe I didn’t dare say this before I became a writer. But as I write this now, I’m overcome with the feeling that there’s something improper about it, in how I started writing just to be the one who writes, giving thought to nothing but the writing. The Writer’s logic is so strong that it makes me disqualify what my own writing knows—and what I know deep down—is the greatest freedom. The real work of a writer.
Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel.
QUOTE:
With a character whose fear and anguish are palpable, this page-turner shows one young woman's struggle
to face harsh realities once the smoke clears.
Ramqvist, Karolina. The White City
Susanne Wells
Library Journal.
142.3 (Feb. 15, 2017): p83.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Ramqvist, Karolina. The White City. Black Cat: Grove. Feb. 2017.176p. tr. from Swedish by Saskia Vogel. ISBN
9780802125958. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9780802189875. F
Choosing a fast, dangerous life often leads to a quick, deadly fall. Young and vulnerable Karin becomes enmeshed in a
small sector of organized crime. She finds a sense of self within this stealthy crowd, loving the parties, the drugs, and
the money. She enjoys a spacious home and is helplessly in love with John, a key player in the criminal ring. Suddenly,
however, the fun comes to an end, the cash is gone, and she has to fend for herself. That is, for herself and her very
young baby, Dream. Nearly homeless during the icy Nordic winter, Karin is all but abandoned by her former friends
and becomes desperate. Will she be able to recover from this crash and provide for her child? In her first English
translation, award-winning Swedish author Ramqvist crafts a story of sparse detail that moves at a rapid pace.
VERDICT With a character whose fear and anguish are palpable, this page-turner shows one young woman's struggle
to face harsh realities once the smoke clears. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.
Wells, Susanne
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Wells, Susanne. "Ramqvist, Karolina. The White City." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2017, p. 83. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481649090&it=r&asid=9695bf205097442923b4108575d8ff8f.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481649090
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506878645219 2/4
QUOTE:
The ghostly Scandinavian setting and Karins closely narrated sense of impending doom,
baby cooing patiently at her hip, make Swedish star Ramqvist s English-language debut an atmospheric and
suspenseful read.
The White City
Annie Bostrom
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The White City. By Karolina Ramqvist. Tr. by Saskia Vogel. Feb. 2017. 176p. Black Cat, paper, $16 (9780802125958).
Karin spends her days nursing her baby, Dream, trying to sleep and envying the frozen natural world that lives outside
her remote home. Signs of luxury, and danger, are there--designer-full closets, bulletproof windows, and a gun in a
drawer--but Karins situation stinks of decay, too. Her lover, John, is gone, perhaps "disappeared," and judging by the
Swedish Economic Crime Authorities knocking on her door (for the second time), it appears he was involved in some
shady dealings. Karin had wisely been unaware of Johns business, but now she has no choice: the house, the car, all of
it will soon be gone. Dream in tow, Karin goes on a mission to reconnect with Johns friends and apparent partners;
there must be something she's owed, someone who will take care of them, especially now that Dream is in the picture.
They were all a family, right? The ghostly Scandinavian setting and Karins closely narrated sense of impending doom,
baby cooing patiently at her hip, make Swedish star Ramqvist s English-language debut an atmospheric and
suspenseful read.--Annie Bostrom
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Bostrom, Annie. "The White City." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479077966&it=r&asid=292dafb1570b19adc076e99f3d1993de.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479077966
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506878645219 3/4
QUOTE:
Though Ramqvist withholds
a great deal of information, especially regarding John, Karin's emotional journey will have a lasting impact on readers.
The White City
Publishers Weekly.
263.52 (Dec. 19, 2016): p92.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The White City
Karolina Ramqvist, trans. from the Swedish by Saskla Vogel. Black Cat, $16 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-0-8021-
2595-8
In Ramqvist's exciting English-language debut, Karin spends the winter inside her mansion, taking naps and breastfeeding
her infant daughter, Dream, a child she never wanted. Her criminal lover, John, left the two of them when the
authorities began tracking him, and now Karin has to deal with his actions. She manages to get by until the Swedish
Economic Crime Authority pays her a visit to inform her that all of her assets will be seized in nine days in order to
cover John's tax debt. Karin finds herself with nowhere to turn. She and Dream go to visit her former friends to ask for
help but get turned down. This short novel, full of suspense and beautifully written dreamlike sequences, places
readers directly in Karin's situation and allows them to feel her isolation and desperation. Though Ramqvist withholds
a great deal of information, especially regarding John, Karin's emotional journey will have a lasting impact on readers.
Agent: Astri von Arbin Ahlander, Ahlander Agency. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The White City." Publishers Weekly, 19 Dec. 2016, p. 92+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475324259&it=r&asid=d8d176da065c02efd2d0a40b9e2ce586.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475324259
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506878645219 4/4
QUOTE:
as Karin, quite literally, works to keep Dream
alive against a backdrop of violence and deception, readers root for both characters to find their way. Delicate and
unsparing.
Ramqvist, Karolina: THE WHITE CITY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Nov. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Ramqvist, Karolina THE WHITE CITY Black Cat/Grove (Adult Fiction) $16.00 2, 7 ISBN: 978-0-8021-2595-8
A new mother turns to old acquaintances for help when her future is under threat.Karin's boyfriend, John, is dead. He's
left Karin with a big, beautiful house on the lakeside, an infant daughter named Dream--and the Swedish Economic
Crime Authority on her trail. John's criminal career had previously ensured Karin's comfort, but now that he's gone,
she has little left but loose change. In the middle of a frigid Scandinavian winter, after she gets word from the authority
that her house and car will be seized within days, Karin--accompanied by Dream--reaches out to some of John's old
associates in the hope that there might be a way, legal or not, to ensure her financial stability. But Karin quickly
realizes that the people she thought of as her closest friends are no longer keen to help. Though the plot of Ramqvist's
English debut may make it sound like a crime thriller, the pace is lulling, the writing sensuous and patiently observed.
So much of the book, in fact, consists of long scenes of Karin nursing Dream or spending hours watching the infant
play that the book feels, more than any thriller, like an allegory of parenting. Karin's life as a new mother is as gray and
unchanging as the winter sky. When she tries to return to her old life, even temporarily, she feels alien and vulnerable.
Ramqvist repeatedly shows Karin struggling with the physical weight of her daughter, trying to push a stroller through
snow, or teetering off balance with a heavy car seat on her arm. And as Karin, quite literally, works to keep Dream
alive against a backdrop of violence and deception, readers root for both characters to find their way. Delicate and
unsparing.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Ramqvist, Karolina: THE WHITE CITY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865706&it=r&asid=d0bff942243a11d1bdc5cef3dca34574.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865706
FEBRUARY 7, 2017 · 7:16 AM ↓ Jump to Comments
The White City: Karolina Ramqvist
Karolina Ramqvist’s moody novel, In the White City, takes us into the life of a young woman named Karin who finds herself in a life she never imagined. When the novel opens, Karin is living in a huge lakeside home bought for her by her criminal boyfriend, John. John is gone, presumably (?) in prison and Karin, feeling bitter and betrayed, is left with their baby Dream, the child that John pushed for against Karin’s nagging feelings that having a family was not a wise move.
Karin, alone in the rambling house with just the baby, has just a few days before she is to be evicted. The utilities have been cut off and the house is freezing. She has nowhere to go, the little cash she has is running out, and the friends she thought she had from John’s criminal gang have evaporated when times got tough. The police and the tax authorities have documented the house’s contents and Karin faces a crisis that she is completely unprepared for.
the-white-city
This is a short novel, moody and depressing which nonetheless manages to incorporate a dreamlike quality into its style. This is a white world (as the title suggests). The house is cold and unwelcoming, and it’s surrounded by a frozen world of snow and ice, but there’s also a sense of blankness in Karin’s mind. She’s stunned by events and unable to cope.
Karin reaches out to a number of people for help–some of whom appear sympathetic and some who do not. Meanwhile she lives in a haze of depression, foraging in the house for food, and neglecting her baby.
The book’s blurb mentions “the coke-filled parties, seemingly endless flow of money, and high social status she previously enjoyed.” Scant reference exists of Karin’s former life, and I would have enjoyed knowing a bit more. When the book opens, everything has changed and not seeing how things were before, gives us little point of contrast, little point of loss. I was reminded of series 1 of Prisoners’ Wives and the glory stripped from Francesca Miller, but in that series we see Francesca’s fall from affluence each step of the way. Francesca finds her own worth in the series, tries to work a ‘normal’ job only to be dragged back in the Life. In The White City, it’s the aftermath of the party and Karin is left with the mop-up. There’s no such character development here–just a woman floundering in hopelessness.
The novel is strongest when describing the police who visit the house and deliver the news that Karin must leave:
And then they moved deeper inside the house. With quiet purpose. Greedily. Even if this was a purely routine call, they approached their plunder with an ill-concealed excitement. They stared in hot silence through her dirty windows, drinking in the view. Her view. They turned around and stared at the fireplace; its little white remote control was on the coffee table even though the gas had run out and it could no longer be lit. They looked at the painting on the far wall, her painting, the one she’d assumed was stolen when John gave it to her.
They had already sent an appraiser around, who’d gone through everything.
The descriptions of the landscape are excellent, and while the novel’s mood and atmosphere are well created, there’s just too many endless references to breast feeding that added nothing to the story, nothing to the plot. Karin is still in shock, her senses dulled and blunted. All this is conveyed well, but it is continual and after a while (and a visit from the Pizza guy) we realise that Karin must stop wallowing in the mess that landed on her doorstep and come to her senses. We get tiny glimpses (and I wish there had been more) into Karin’s former life–the bullet proof glass in the lakeside house, for example. Details of Karin’s former life infuse energy into this otherwise bleak, depressing tale:
Everything had been documented, every one of her purchases, each step she’d taken, or so it seemed. Pictures of her on airplanes and at the watchmaker. Tickets to Thailand and Brazil, gym memberships, dermatologists, timepieces, jewelry, cars. boats. The dog and the horse each had their own column.
Review copy
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel
"The Girlfriend" by Karolina Ramqvist
She loves it, can't live without it. Has never been able to make it work with "normal" guys. But the life as the girlfriend of a gangster also tears her. He can be gone for weeks, and though having left her another, new, phone in the big immaculate house he got her for Valentine's day, he does not call or text. When he gets home, he can have scars on his face. Fall with his face down. In her previous apartment, he hid cocain behind the flour, which was fine by her once she found out she was the only girl he wanted. And she cannot ask questions - this is not how it works.
"Flickvännen" is based on Ramqvist's own life. She has flickered by in my Facebook feed as suggested friend, which felt like a direct link to the gangster world. But - as my friend and colleague said - always differ between the work of an author and the author herself. And this author is a good writer.
Posted by Jana Hilding at 00:54
QUOTE:
Although the pace is slow and nothing much happens, Karolina Ramqvist manages to keep the portrait of Karin intriguing. But we are not allowed a full picture, just hints at why she has chosen this and why she stays. At the end of the book we are left wondering what a potential sequel would reveal
Karolina Ramqvist, Flickvännen (The Girlfriend)
Wahlström & Widstrand, 2009. ISBN: 9789146219958
Reviewed by Marie Allen in SBR 2010:1
Karolina Ramqvist is editor-in-chief for the magazine Arena and also writes for Dagens Nyheter. She is known as a fearless and provocative voice in the media debate. The Girlfriend, her second novel, is told at a slow pace, where topical issues of people’s behaviour in modern society simmer beneath the cool, glossy surface. The novel has been awarded the monthly magazine Vi’s literature prize for 2009. The whole story pivots around Karin, a young, beautiful woman, who is waiting for her gangster boyfriend John to come home. It is the perfect gilded cage, every luxury imaginable, no expense spared. Karin plays happy homes, polishes the glass table and wipes the fridge with special tissues. Meanwhile, John is out somewhere ‘on a job’ to keep them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Karin thinks of her life as a parallel to that of Karen and Henry Hill in the mafia film Goodfellas, which in turn is based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi. It tells the true story of Henry Hill, who testified against his former mafia friends and was entered into the FBI witness protection programme with his family. Karin does not want to give this up and does not think she could love an ordinary man. She says that she has always known that she was different, that her life was a fairy tale, far removed from other girls’ aspirations and her feminist mother’s and goody-two-shoes sisters’ idea of a ‘decent man’ and ‘good life’. She does ponder why she has fallen for a man whose occupation involves violence and crime, and when she suspects that this time he has really hurt someone it bothers her. But as he keeps the two existences very separate, so can she. For it is simple to her: ‘I know that people admire criminals, even though they say they don’t.’ It’s just like the need to get respect from people: ‘There are those who admit that they want this, and those who pretend that they don’t want it.’ The appeal to have everything and anything you want when you want it, including respect, the best tables at restaurants, and the best drugs, is far too strong to disregard. The middle-class life she was born into held no such appeal. The only people she can talk to are the WAGS of John’s brothers in crime. When the men are away, they have girly dinners with champagne and cocaine. The conversation moves from make-up, fashion and holidays, touching briefly on relationship dilemmas, and ending up with sexual habits. But even here, within the inner circle, it is an unspoken taboo to bring up the nature of their partners’ business activities. Although the pace is slow and nothing much happens, Karolina Ramqvist manages to keep the portrait of Karin intriguing. But we are not allowed a full picture, just hints at why she has chosen this and why she stays. At the end of the book we are left wondering what a potential sequel would reveal: will Karin find the effects of this life too much, like not wanting to have a baby with a man who could be dead or in prison? Will she finally get tired of the golden, but empty, cage and leave? Will the police turn up or maybe next time John never return? The book has been heralded for highlighting social problems. The main social problem at its centre is not women who fall for criminal or violent men, but rather the fact that, surrounded by the glorified, ever-present, stupefying media, women (and men) find it too easy and attractive to slide into a conscience-free virtual reality of glamour and luxury, dulled by booze and drugs. It is too easy to blame it all on not fitting in amongst ordinary people with ordinary lives and a fear of the mundane. What chance do today’s teenage girls have, weaned on a ‘cultural’ diet of MTV, ‘docusoaps’ and celebrity shows, in a society that idolises beauty, wealth and status? And the boys? Are foulmouthed rappers and ultra-violent, bloody films really the role models our next generation needs?
Marie Allen
QUOTE:
The book is a literary analysis of power, gender, relationships, and fame. The author offers no answers and there is no clear end to anything. Instead, through Saga’s tale, Ramqvist challenges readers to think about their own selves, their own experiences and beliefs, and to consider whether they like what they find.
Karolina Ramqvist, Alltings början (The Beginning of Everything)
Norstedts, 2012.
Reviewed by B.J. Epstein in SBR 2013:1
Review Section: Fiction
Saga has just started secondary school when she meets him: the man who is to become her obsession. At first she does not think much of Victor Schantz, and cannot understand why Pauline, her best friend, keeps following Schantz around and insists that he is ‘Stockholm’s most beautiful man’. But soon Saga falls for him too or, at least, seems to like the idea of falling for him. However, he is an adult with a job as a hip party-planner and she is just another young groupie to sleep with. Can this be the beginning of everything for Saga?
Amidst the club culture of the 1990s, Saga begins to find herself but is not always sure that she likes what she finds. She was raised by her radical feminist ,artist mother to be a strong, independent woman, never reliant on a man, and yet she is unable to fulfil that role. Or so she thinks. She wants security and love, and, perhaps most of all, attention.
In this novel, Ramqvist, a journalist and the author of Flickvännen (The Girlfriend) as well as several works of nonfiction, captures the voice of an uncertain, hesitant, desperate-to-be-cool teenage girl. Rumour has it that this work is based on her own life, an idea strengthened by the picture of Ramqvist on the cover.
Saga is not always the most likeable of characters. She is a bit spoiled, somewhat cold, privileged, and quite self-centred, but her character is part of what makes the novel about her so compelling. The reader wants to know what will happen to Saga and how she is going to develop and, while asked to be critical of her, still desires to come closer and truly get to know her. Her insecurities are ones that readers can relate to, and her story (indeed, her saga) raises many questions.
The book is a literary analysis of power, gender, relationships, and fame. The author offers no answers and there is no clear end to anything. Instead, through Saga’s tale, Ramqvist challenges readers to think about their own selves, their own experiences and beliefs, and to consider whether they like what they find.