The English Bookshop

 

Last night, I attended a book discussion group meeting in this quaint little bookshop in central Uppsala. The group included a young Swede named Anders who served as the discussion leader (he is a store employee), a Swedish woman who has lived in Uppsala all her life, an American from North Dakota who came to Sweden as an exchange student in 1969 and decided to live here, an elderly Englishman from Sheffield, and a young Belgian fellow name Henri. More about Henri later...

I walked into the shop early in our stay here and noticed a sign for a "classics" book group scheduled for June 10 to discuss Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, a novel from 1907 based on an actual event in Greenwich in the 1880s. I told the clerk I was just visiting here and asked if it was OK for me to sign up. She said "of course" and we then talked about books for 15 minutes or so.  The Swedes are so nice!

The flyer for the discussion group

I have read several of Conrad's books over the years including, of course, Heart of Darkness. I think I enjoy his sea stories the most, but I found The Secret Agent to be a worthwhile read. It starts out slowly, but builds up to a climax in fine fashion. Some of the group thought he used too many adjectives and could have done without one entire chapter but, in my opinion, a great writer can do what he wants and we readers can take it or leave it. I am sure he had his reasons for every sentence in the book. It is definitely not an easy read however, as he goes back and forth in time in a sometimes confusing way and uses an impressionistic style that some may find off-putting.

At the end, we were asked if we would recommend the book to a friend. I think everybody, myself included, said it depends on the friend.

As we left, I found myself walking with Henri who, it turns out, is a scientific liaison officer at Uppsala University for an organization called Wallonie-Bruxelles International which appears to be a Walloon-specific (i.e. French speaking) arm of the Belgian government. After talking a bit about this and that, Henri offered to take us, along with his fiance, for a short driving trip to a nearby town, Sigtuna. The town has some excellent medieval-era buildings and is an ancient capital of Sweden. Of course, I accepted graciously and we are working on fixing the day.

Today, we went to a Turkish market we have been to a couple of times before for fresh produce and, on the way back we stopped at a bakery and found some wienerbröd which we snapped up and carried home. Very tasty.

wienerbröd (Valerie, this is for you)

We also stopped by at the English Bookshop where I asked the clerk for some typically Swedish fiction in good English translations. She was very excited at the question and enthusiastically pulled several books off the shelf while telling me how wonderful they are. I picked out a couple, The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.  Have any of you readers out there read them?