Collected Works: A Novel: 'A wry bestseller that reads like the effortlessly chic European cousin of Fleishman is in Trouble' (Telegraph)

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With her Collected Works, the author has cemented her love for literature – and we hope she does it again.” The mystery at the heart of the story adds urgency to this warm, engaging, and funny novel about the inebriation of youth and the sobriety of middle age; about lives shaped by art and ideas; about our human flaws and joys. Collected Works is a thoroughly enjoyable book." - Aysegül Savas, author of Walking on the Ceiling Philosophers, on the other hand, were solitary creatures of the mind, soaring high above the mishmash of family in a celestial craft built of thought alone: by default, a philosopher worked alone. It was just a few weeks after she had successfully defended her doctoral thesis, and the plan had been for her to take up a position as a lecturer in the department the following autumn.

A compelling mystery and poignant bildungsroman for readers of Karl Ove Knausgård, Collected Works is a novel about love, power, and art—and what leads us to make the pivotal decisions that change the course of our lives. There's still that biography of (the fictional author) William Wallace he's working on, but he never seems to have gotten that much further with the novel that he hoped would be his magnum opus than trying out possible titles: "Via Au Revoir Antibes (too pretentious), Project X (an uninspiring provisional title), and Youth (nondescript), he'd circuitously returned to the incomprehensible but tantalizing title Night Thoughts".

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Collected Works is a dramturgical masterpiece and as groundbreaking as any Donna Tartt novel. (…) If I’m to make further comparisons I have to bring out phenomenal storytellers like Klas Östergren and Kjell Westö.”

It all makes for a good read -- though, despite its length, one can be left feeling there's less there than one would have wished. Boken utstrålar skrivarglädje, även om den är väldigt välskriven har den lite roliga inslag där författaren lekt med texten och hittat på roliga saker, skrivit upprepande eller annat. Det gör att den aldrig känns långrandig.

A long novel is always a supremely confident move by any writer, not least a first-time one. Sandgren spent a decade working on the book outside her day job as a psychologist and it shows. Every sentence has been constructed with immense care. Every scene has been honed and polished until it sings. There is not a word that hasn’t been carefully considered before its inclusion, then reconsidered with each redrafting.