Campaigning for Criticism

Nominated for the Nordic Council´s Literature Award

Monika Fagerholm
Den amerikanska flickan (The american girl)
Söderstrøms forlag. FI

By Mogens Bjerring Hansen

The Swedish-speaking area of Finland is the legendary land of modern Scandinavian poetry. The giants of the inter-war years now have a number of outstanding successors. Prose has stood in the shadow of the language of the (Swedish) gods. But since the war and in recent years, it has helped in various modern forms to define the literary landscape of Swedish-Finland. And as in the other Nordic countries, women authors are very much in evidence. One of these women authors is Monika Fagerholm (born in 1961), who has established her reputation as a modern novelist within the past ten-fifteen years. Her novel entitled Den amerikanska flickan (The American Girl, published by Söderströms forlag, 2004) was deservedly nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literature Award in 2005. The novel is original, and yet it has charmingly recognisable roots in Finnish-Swedish literature. And viewed from above it seems true to say that the familiar and modern, tradition and revolt are well-known motifs from Swedish art in Finland.
Den amerikanska flickan is a wildly designed and yet richly imaginative novel with features resembling those of a detective story. It contains an extensive list of characters, operates on several different time scales, and even includes the near future. It has a number of alternating narrative voices and points of view, above which there is a rhetorical voice commenting and informing (this is necessary), as well as arranging and organising. Poetic lines of verse from American pop songs wind their way within and around the action like leitmotifs. This seems natural in a book which is a musical fantasy with repetitive themes in new variations. But the book’s focal point has traces of childhood memories, and in the midst of all the colourful texture of characters and sideline action, here is a quiet spot: a little, neglected girl called Sandra who is the novel’s main character.
The novel is set in the geographical and literary heartland of Swedish Finland – the coast and archipelago west of Helsinki, with brief digressions to Åland, Helsinki („the city by the sea“), and even New York. Its social environment is an offshoot of (or late stage in) the history of the Swedish upper class – although presented in a (superficially) carefree and eccentric bohemian version. „Money isn’t much of a problem“, as someone says about the father of the main character, Sandra. These characters have imaginative houses in the archipelago, expensive flats with a sea view in the „city by the sea“, and a yacht close at hand as well as plenty of time to sail around in it for years at a time. The women might run trendy fashion boutiques in the city by the sea, or spend their time on airy-fairy academic writing projects. All in all a satirical picture of a late stage in the development of the upper class. Is it an accurate picture? For instance, this world is very far removed from Jörn Donner’s satire on the ruthless and powerful financial bourgeoisie.

Transcendental, entertaining, hyped?
The novel covers three generations. The protohistory takes place in 1969, when an American hippie girl arrives in the local community. She is maladjusted, and she turns the heads of the local lads as well as doing secret things which end dramatically with her death and the suicide of one of her admirers. This is all seen or sensed by two young girls named Sandra and Doris, and it appeals to their imaginations. Sandra and Doris are the next generation of characters, and as mentioned above they are the focal point of the novel. Sandra and Doris are left to their own devices, living their own lives in the houses and surrounding forest. They fantasise about the American girl, and identify with her. They are surrounded by family chaos. Sandra’s father, „an aged erotomaniac“, is constantly replacing one partner by another, organising parties and wild hunting outings with his drinking companions, and calling in colourful call girls. Sandra’s mother disappeared a long time ago.
Sandra witnesses all the liberated activities in her „home“, and the two young girls are taken up by the American girl’s erotic secrets. Doris seduces Sandra, and they gain an early lesbian experience which has huge significance. The two girls constitute a double figure of alternating light and darkness, turning into each other’s alter egos. It all ends dramatically when Doris takes her own life in circumstances similar to those in which the American girl died. The protohistory repeats itself. But why?
The novel constantly approaches and postpones the solution to its mysteries in an eternal series of regressions from constantly new angles. The most mysterious aspect is that the events take place in the imagination of the neglected and lonely child, and the story closely parallels the child’s fantasies. Slowly and hesitantly, the fatal betrayal is revealed in the mosaic of stories: the absence of her father and mother. But the mystery extends further down into the subterranean universe. All these psychological situations and processes are depicted as external events.
When Sandra loses her erotic friend and thus a part of herself, she quickly goes downhill. She launches herself into a wild sex life – with men. First with a local man, creating a link with the deceased (sacrificed) American girl; then with her French teacher at sixth-form college, for whom she turns into a merciless Lolita; and then as a whore in hotels and bars. Finally she runs away – to New York. Like the American girl at the start of the novel, she records a sad pop song in a kiosk – all about the fact that her song has been taken from her. Then with a new girlfriend she becomes a daytime stripper at hotels in Alaska and elsewhere. The final pages jump to the year 2008, when a new generation featuring a girl called Johanna takes its first steps into the mysteries and delights of life, and a new repetition and variation of the protohistory can begin. The last sentence of the novel reads “To be continued”. The plan is that „Den amerikanska flickan“ should form the first part of a double novel.
The novel transcends our limits and entertains us – it verges on the sensational. Epically it possesses a raw sense of the unfinished that is probably a strength. It alternates between darkness and light (although it is attracted most to darkness); it cultivates passion and returns constantly to the theme of decay. The novel’s interwoven chorus of pop poetry is generally provided in a melancholy key, but here too there is a sense that the delight of artistic narrative can be born out of obscurity. That dead and half-dead figures can be brought back to life by art or as art. The epic variety of the novel is itself an expression of this sentiment. Which is why it ends with an allusion to the myth of the singer Orpheus, trying to bring his dead Eurydice back from the underworld.
Den amerikanska flickan is a novel with an entirely contemporary tone. Some readers might be tempted to compare Monika Fagerholm to another female Finnish-Swedish author from a previous generation – Ulla-Lena Lundberg. Her novels about „Kongens Anna“ (The King’s Anna) from Ålandsøerne (Monika Fagerholm’s geographical setting) also have sensational, novelette-like features. But their simple narrative form and pragmatic storytelling are a very long way from Den amerikanska flickan. Monika Fagerholm’s new novel is Finnish-Swedish prose in a modern, international style.

Mogens Bjerring-Hansen is a Senior Teacher

Translated by Nick Wrigley