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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This novel has everything a good book needs: suspense, mystery, history, art, relationships, friendship, betrayal and death. Because the story keeps zapping between different scenes, it never gets tired. At the same time, it is not too composed.” Thirty-three-year-old Cecilia Berg, mother of two and promising scholar, had vanished without a trace. If there is one thing that Lydia Sandgren has accomplished it is the stirring of emotions.(…) Collected Works is without a doubt the most hyped work of literary fiction published in Sweden this year.”

det nu den kommer? Den andra Renässansen. Där litteraturen och bildningen återfår sin betydelse och där frankofili och fördjupningskurser i humaniora får upprättelse. Klart att det skulle finnas en Julian Morrow-referens, förresten. And her face was a stranger’s, as he’d known it would be. She had sharp eyes and determined creases between her nose and her mouth. She was holding a pair of powder-blue suede gloves and carrying a handbag in the crook of her arm, and was probably about to go home to her family in Askim or Billdal where she would sit down with a glass of wine, feel annoyed at her husband clattering in the kitchen—he was always so loud, no matter how she tried to explain that it hurt her ears, that it was painful—and ask her children about school without listening to their answers. A witty, toothy, family saga, unashamedly intellectual . . . that, like youth, seems to have it all—energy, aspiration, and self-delusion.”— Catherine Taylor, Financial Times In prachtig proza - slechts af en toe ontsierd door de al te Noord-Nederlandse vertaling (godsamme, wij taaien hier niet af, wij gaan, net als de Zweden vermoed ik, gewoon naar huis) - vertelt Lydia Sandgren hoe de vijftigjarige uitgever Martin Berg op de woonkamervloer terecht is gekomen, met stapels papier om zich heen. Met nog meer memorabele anekdotes, meer humor en de vinger wat vaker op de deleteknop had Sandgren een waar meesterwerk kunnen beitelen uit dit veelbelovende debuut. Niettemin is ‘Verzamelde werken’ zo’n boek waarvan de personages je vrienden lijken te worden, zo’n boek dat de omgeving doet vervagen, zodat je al lezende de tram mist of tegen een paal aan loopt. Wedden dat er over twintig jaar debuten verschijnen met een wikkel waarop staat: ‘De nieuwe Lydia Sandgren is geboren.’?His presence was, in all honesty, pointless, and consequently he very nearly didn’t accompany her to that particular open house. But then he did because if he ever did say no, it would likely be the first no of many. Admirably, Sandgren doesn't opt for the easy course in the end: there is at least one surprising and very big turn, but the novel's build-up isn't to a simple resolution but rather a much more open-ended one. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.

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.Gustav, meanwhile, is hurting too. His obsession with Cecilia’s inexplicable disappearance had made his art hagiographic, fixated on her image. When posters for Gustav’s retrospective plaster Cecilia’s face on major billboards across the city, Martin’s daughter Rakel learns a haunting fact that points toward her mother’s whereabouts. She and her brother chase this clue across time, memory, and Europe, to discover why their beloved mother abandoned her family, with the imagined hope that the question of what makes a person can ever be answered. Lydia Sandgren is a debut author, but she writes this novel as if she’s done nothing else for decades…” Martin Berg is a Swedish publisher living in the aftermath of tragedy. More than a decade ago, his wife, a writer and academic named Cecilia, vanished one morning, leaving behind Martin and their two young children, Rakel and Elis. In her outstanding debut novel, Collected Works, translated into propulsive English by Agnes Broomé, Lydia Sandgren tells Martin’s story across two narrative timelines. The novel interweaves his youth and the progress of his life up to Cecilia’s disappearance with events in the present day, where Rakel, his daughter, is preparing a reader’s report on a German novel to which Martin has been offered the rights. It seems, astonishingly, to be about her missing mother. The central figure in Collected Works is publisher Martin Berg, of Berg & Andrén, an independent publisher putting out about twenty titles a year which, as the novel opens, is set to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary. Door de breedvoerigheid worden de personages uit het boek echte mensen die je erg goed leert kennen. De levendigheid wordt gegarandeerd door de lichte en tegelijkertijd pittige dialogen, en de boeiende beschouwingen over literatuur, kunst, filosofie, de psychologie van de mens, enz. De vraag die het boek overkoepelt en in grote mate bij elkaar houdt, is of de schoonheid van literatuur en kunst voldoende de alledaagsheid van het leven kan verbreken en voldoende zin kan geven. Heel wat beschrijvingen zijn ook humoristisch en brengen een glimlach rond je lippen.

Collected Works . . . is as insatiable in its read as it is insightful to modern challenges of family, memory, and finding purpose." —Matthew Bedard, Flaunt Neat as in a perfectly composed pop song – catchy, bombastic, irresistable…What’s left to say, therefore, is just that we hope that it doesn’t take another ten years for Sandgren to write her next book.” Poised at the intersection of life and art, reality and imagination, [Collected Works] blends the thrill of mystery with the curiosity and depth of philosophical inquiry.” Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.A sweeping and complex drama of family, art and sacrifice… Readers will be captivated’ Publishers Weekly At times I wondered whether Jonathan Franzen had transplanted his relentless but futile quest to write the Great American Novel to Europe instead, but Sandgren has far more about her than Franzen, including a lightness of touch that means you don’t feel the constant presence of the author looking over your shoulder. The book’s length gives the characters and scenes space to breathe until you’re entirely immersed in the world Sandgren creates. Curiously, despite the characters being exactly the kind of people you’d skip parties altogether to avoid, and possibly even move house, this long immersion in their lives means you find yourself caring about what happens to them in a manner reminiscent of the work of Sally Rooney.