I’ve started a book club together with a couple of friends (yet another example of us having become older). I’ve chosen a book, and in a couple of weeks, I’m going to host the first meeting. Cook dinner, moderate the first book discussion. Time will tell if it’s going to be something lasting, or just a passing idea.
The first book for the book club is a Swedish novel called “Spill” by Sigrid Combüchen. It got the most prestigious Swedish literature prize a couple of years ago, and it’s been on my to-read list ever since. It’s mainly about these two women. An author and a very old lady who used to live in a house that is used as the home in one of the author’s novels. They correspond about life and the past through letters. In a passage where the old lady describes her daughter’s marriage, she writes (my translation):
Young women should not fall in love with beautiful men. They are and will stay most infatuated with themselves.
I’ve borrowed the book from the library, and the last sentence of the two above has been underlined with pencil and someone has written YES! in the margin.
And I think I must agree. I also have to admit that my weakness for beautiful men never has led me into anything constructive.
As a teenager, I blamed photography, that I liked beautiful faces because I wanted to photograph them. Now, I don’t know. I just get these obsessions, a face with the right proportions between nose, shin and cheekbones is hypnotic. I imagine them being incredible human beings as well.
Mostly, though, they disappoint me. They’re just as flawed and possibly even more self-possessed than the rest of us. I should have learned by now. I’m not that young anymore.
Katja Malmborg 