TWO WOMEN

Subtitled “A Novel of Friendship,” this third English translation of the popular Swedish author of Hanna’s Daughters (1998) and Simon’s Family (1999) explores the relationship between a Stockholm matron and a Chilean immigrant survivor, a victim of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. In flat, simple declarative sentences that spell out everything (often numbingly: e.g., “The problem is that we confuse sex and love”), Fredriksson shows how reserved, withdrawn Inge (a writer and teacher) and grief-stricken Mira (who works in a nursery, where she must care for other people’s children) bond, withhold, then share secrets, and come to understand that they’re destined to understand each other only imperfectly. Fredriksson has the heart of a realist and the prose style of a bestselling romance writer: the combination is a commercially potent one, and Two Women will not disappoint this author’s very considerable readership.