Sveamaus

Svea Mausolf is more than just the meme queen of Instagram, whose memes dredge up buried memories from the living rooms of embarrassing uncles and aunts – even if the protagonists’ repellent remarks and behaviour already offer a foretaste of the characters in Image. With self-ironic barbs, her novel skewers petit-bourgeois narrow-mindedness and, by page three, sends the first shivers of disgust running down the reader’s spine.

Whether Peggy will survive her sister’s engagement party without an emergency session with her psychologist is not the first question that arises – rather, I quickly found myself wondering just how revolting Martin, inflated by years of parental adoration, could possibly become. The slimy mummy’s boy rents a room in Peggy’s flat, as she finds herself in her late thirties still without a degree and cut off from her parents’ financial support. The book’s content is saturated with bodies in all their forms, from the deodorant salt caked in bus passengers’ armpits to the characters’ fits of rage. Society, in all its abysses, is mercilessly held up to the mirror, and like spectators in a circus ring we wait breathlessly for the next banana skin on which a grotesque clown will slip – somewhere between schadenfreude and pity for those involved.

While her memes capture moments of cosy living shaped by profoundly uncosy people, Image depicts everyday madness set against the backdrop of droning radio music, the grimy atmosphere of corner pubs, and a warm bottle of Fanta Mango.

With clammy hands, we await a reading by Sveamaus, eager to experience the full emotional rollercoaster.