Geir Gulliksen on the nuclear family, love, and gender roles – Sveriges Radio

the Same day that I read out “the Story of a marriage” I can see how a female critic writes about Nina Björk that it is good that she is not norm-critical, "not trying to amputate the part of the woman who dreams about love, husband and children".

My head goes in a spin. Of course, it is not a female desire to want to have nuclear family. And of course, the desire for love to be something other than the longing for family.

And Geir Gulliksen this is not just a theory, but real practice. The home of the couple Jon and Timmy, who have been together for twenty years and now live with two children in a house with the forest, löprundor and ski trails within easy reach, where everything is perfect. He takes the whole vardagsansvaret – washing and cooking; enjoy it. He reads Simone de Beauvoir and is sure to work in the home are not divided according to traditional gender stereotypes. She gets to cut the roast. They have a great sex life and get the lock on itself to prevent children from stepping out when the urge becomes too strong.

But alas – here it comes; she meets another man. She is hit by another. And despite the fact that Jon even wants her to affirm this, in the belief that freedom itself to do that she still is his, or is his again, turns out the feelings be more complicated than that.

And Geir Gulliksen, on the basis of this, and based on the question "what exactly happened?" wrote a short, clear and stylistically safe novel. It is as easy and bright as snow to form. Clean and neat as the home. But perhaps precisely because of this so there is no protection when the idyll breaks.

it is powerful with these well-chosen details, these scenes from a life. That when he cleans out the fridge after she moved. How he throw away everything they bought together, and how Gulliksen counting up all of these messy cans and pinched tubes before they go in the trash. Good stuff, favoritpastejer. The son who sadly looks on.

A standard, contemporary, vulnerable, equal to one. It should not feel as original as it does to meet him in a novel. He who dreams of love, wife and children. And so she, wishing to have another love.

Anneli Dufva
anneli.dufva@sverigesradio.se