2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Could I really have done things differently?, May 20, 2009
This review is from: Serious Game (Paperback)
THE SERIOUS GAME is an obscure Scandinavian novel from a century ago that very much deserves a renascence. Its subjects are love and adultery, and the sacrifice of the heart to career interests, the desire for financial security, and the conventions of society. Again and again in the novel there arises the rueful wish "if only I could go back and do things differently." But the novel also questions whether a different decision or life course really would have been possible. The defining quote from THE SERIOUS GAME is: "You do not choose your destiny any more than you choose your wife, your lover or your children. You get them, and you have them, and possibly you lose them. But you do not choose them!"
The novel is set in Stockholm, Sweden and spans 15 years, from 1897 to 1912. It follows the checkered, on- and off-again romance of Arvid Sjarnblom and Lydia Stille through their initial rather innocent infatuation to their separate marriages to a stormy adulterous relationship. As they begin their adultery, they look back to their uncomplicated youthful romance and lament that they "reached the autumn of our lives while still so young."
THE SERIOUS GAME begins in a rather dated, old-fashioned style, but as the story progresses, the style and tone become lighter, defter, more ironic, and more modern. By and large the story moves briskly, with several forward leaps of months or years. Some of the issues that Soderberg explores in the novel (these explorations are seamlessly woven into the story rather than heavy-handed philosophical digressions) are religion, morality, and male-female relationships and the extent to which the then-contemporary strictures of respectable social conduct were marked by a double-standard. Ultimately, love is portrayed as a "serious game" in a novel that, ironically, is shot through and through with a fatalism that gives the lie to the characters having actually played a game.
A nice touch is when, well into their adultery, Arvid takes to spying on the window to Lydia's apartment from a church cemetary next to the tomb of a Swedish military hero whose coat of arms is surrounded by the words "Honour Duty Will" -- words (and a glorious life) that contrast starkly with the fecklessness of Arvid. Implicitly, then, the novel also raises the question whether such fecklessness is a modern condition.
THE SERIOUS GAME is a fine novel of modern literature. Although it is just shy of the pantheon of classics, it deserves to be kept in print and to be read.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent translation of a Swedish classic, January 18, 2002
This review is from: Serious Game (Paperback)
I was not expecting much, and what did I find? Strindberg! Excruciating dilemmas a sensitive person faces in his/her intimate relations as he/she grows into adulthood and a place in the world. Sweet tender love distracting the mind; discoveries about self and other as the fatal plunge works through its effects, destroying happiness and self regard and faith in the good will of the Other whom one has loved. Strindbergian anguish. And yet withal an honest tale true-told, that leaves the reader not depressed ...but released. The experience has been cathartic. One feels grateful, even fond: sadness, even fondness for the man who drew so honestly and fully upon his own life experience to create art.
And a word for the translator: Bravo! I particularly appreciated the cleanness, the unwordyness of the prose that gives it a modern ring in the good sense of the word.
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