Safe Return Doubtful

translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel

This is a 1964 novella about the harsh lives of a farming family in the south of Sweden in the early 1900s. 62 years later, and it receives its first English translation from Saskia Vogel.
I had this recommended to me a while back, but when I read the précis of it more recently, something similar to my first sentence here, I must admit that it didn’t sound very interesting.

However, taut with intensity and a gathering momentum that grabs hold and doesn’t let go, it certainly is interesting.. and more than that, it’s a great piece of literature with splendidly drawn characters and a plot that reads something like a fairy tale, with Trotzig’s style of writing often more like poetry than a usual narrative.

It is the story of three siblings born to a father with penchant for violence, and a seemingly unconcerned mother. Judit, the oldest child, raises her two younger brothers on the desolate Swedish farm their father has run into the ground. One of the brothers, Albert, doesn’t speak, and is bullied at school. The other, Viktor, is picked on by his father for no apparent reason. Judit is nicknamed ‘Queen’ by the locals, as she is something they have never seen, a powerful and forceful young woman.

As Viktor goes through adolescence he gets in more and more trouble, and eventually decides on a new life in the United States.

Trotzig’s writing, and Vogel’s interpretation, may annoy some, as it lacks punctuation at times, as it seems she is more concerned with description than any detailed plot development. However, it worked for me. It gives a sense that not everything should be taken at face value, and there is a mysterious tinge to the second half in particular, and a sense of the supernatural.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5