A Triptych of Human Frailty: A Nearly Normal Family, by M. T. Edvardsson

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read an early copy of this book.

Although I am a great fan of whodunnits I am a relative novice when it comes to Scandi Noir. I managed to miss all those trendy TV series, and apart from a brief fling with Henning Mankell, I have only read two Scandi Noir novels proper. So I was looking forward to reading A Nearly Normal Family to make up for this obvious shortcoming in my history as a fan of the genre.

Alas! This ambition has been thwarted once again. Because A Nearly Normal Family is not a Scandi Noir novel. That isn't the same as saying that it's not a bloody good read, because it is. It is also not saying that it does not excavate somewhat the shortcomings of Swedish society, because it does. Or that at its heart does not lie a murder mystery, because, again, it does. It is simply saying that it does not have the narrative viewpoint of your typical police procedural.

It is a finely balanced text structured in three parts. We hear first the voice of the father, then that of the daughter and finally that of the mother. If this has a somewhat religious resonance, I am fairly sure it is intentional.

The father here is, literally, a father, a Pastor of the Church of Sweden. In other words an establishment figure but, for all that, I have to say of the Scandinavian type, in other words forward-looking and relatively liberal, but above all, moral. It is through him that we first confront the main plot knot of this novel, the murder by stabbing of a well-off youngish man, with his 19-year old being accused of killing him. We are faced with his confusion and his questions and he offers his point of view on his daughter's conflicted background as well as the first clues pointing to the circumstances surrounding the killing. At first we are sympathetic but then being in his, rather limited, head, besides the central dilemma confronting him, becomes somewhat wearing. Just when we are about to set the book aside with a sigh...

The second part begins with the daughter's point of view. Needless to say she is quite a different person from her father or what her father would wish her to be. 

And this is all to the good making a very refreshing change. The lack of stimulation of her current circumstances, she is being held in jail pending trial, contrast strongly with her vivid recollections of her life outside. She is at the same time passionate and contradictory, strong and weak, perhaps a far more believable character than her father, living in a completely different, more visceral, world from him. Her capacity for self-reflection is stimulated by a particularly inspired prison psychologist who gives her to read texts such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, The Catcher in the Rye and Crime and Punishment, which are also clear references for this novel.

The mother’s narrative seems far shorter than either of the former, and for me, less convincing, for example, she is supposed to be a highly qualified criminal lawyer, who is married to a Pastor, and she is unaware of basic biblical tales? Being an unbeliever does not make you ignorant of religious basics… Also her position is far, far, murkier than that of her husband and child, she knows but she almost does not dare to know. She acts as the ultimate “fixer”, like the holy spirit, who in church tradition may be female, and whose main function is to mediate between the father and his child.

Overall, I have to say as a novel, this worked brilliantly, and the central whodunnit is not resolved until the very last lines, but by then this question has lost all urgency and what the reader really wants to know is “Why was it done?” and “Will justice be done?” Which are, perhaps, far more important questions.

In summary, this novel may not be the Scandi Noir I expected it to be… But it may be all the better for that.