Customer Reviews

The Exception

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This taut and compelling novel is set in an office, The Danish Center for Genocide Information in Copenhagen, a seemingly homogenous, if small, group of females, their boss, Paul, frequently absent at important meetings to promote the interests of the Center. Upon further observation, certain rifts become clear, three of the women forming a subgroup to keep the fourth from joining their intimate inner circle. Iben and Malene, the youngest and most attractive of the women, are friends outside the office, their relationship defined as much by their outside activities as through office camaraderie. Camilla, Paul's secretary, keeps mostly to herself, but gravitates toward the security of the younger employees. It is the new librarian, Anne-Lise, who is the object of their petty rejection. Anne-Lise is purposely kept off balance, out of the loop of conventional discourse, the library door kept closed to protect Camilla from drafts.

There is no apparent reason for Anne-Lise's isolation from the others, but after Iben and Malene receive threatening emails on their office computers, it becomes clear that the poor treatment of the librarian has existed for some time. The threats are taken seriously because of the nature of the Center's activities, archiving publications exposing the hidden motivations of various societies in service to genocide throughout history (elimination of the Jews, Darfur and related atrocities). Serbian war criminal Mirko Sigic is an obvious suspect, but his current whereabouts remains unknown. When the police fail to determine the source of the emails, the office settles into an uneasy coexistence, relations breaking down further when Anne-Lise reacts to an increasingly untenable situation.

Before long, a whispering campaign begins, Anne-Lise the brunt of her coworkers' doubts- could Anne-Lise be the source of the threats? In particular, Iben and Malene are hostile adversaries in a sly campaign to drive the librarian from her position. For her part, Anne-Lise is inclined to doubt her own sanity, tormented by the women's escalating cruelties, examining herself for the same terrible motives that cause innocent people to become complicit in genocide: "We all have it in us to be murderers and executioners and war criminals." As the fragile balance of the office slowly unravels, each woman is laid bare, her inner demons exposed: "It is as if the normal rules no longer apply."

The juxtaposition of office politics and the Center's purpose is a brilliant maneuver. The actions of the four protagonists and their rationalizations for aberrant behavior, reveals the larger issue writ small, the elementary level of basic human behavior: "Victimizing others is part of human nature." The result is shocking, the occasional insertion of treatises emphasizing the insidious nature of evil. The four separate voices document the obvious, what each person may do in the interest of survival. There are no easy answers here, no deft closure to the threatening emails, the presence of the Serbian war criminal or the extraordinary measures taken by the characters in their own interests. Prodding his way into the subconscious text of daily activities, the author opens a vast chasm of doubt. emphasizing that there are many opportunities along the way before true evil is done. A chilling ride through the dark corridors of the human psyche, Jungersen has written a tour de force. Luan Gaines/2007.

This is an extraordinary new novel, just published in the United States, which kept me engrossed all last Labor Day weekend almost without stopping. It's a long book but it reads like a very short one. It's a thriller that's grounded in all-too-tangible reality. It's smart without pretentiousness. It's very, very dark; but I believe it has an almost subterranean Christian theme, which I will get to after I describe the novel.

"Don't they ever think about anything except killing each other?" It's a bold author who announces his subject in the very first line of his novel. The line is spoken by a kidnapped foreign-aid worker caught in the middle of an African civil war, but we learn to our horror it's also a delineation of the entire human condition. The novel is set in the fictional Danish Center for Information on Genocide (DGIC), a small foundation in Copenhagen dedicated to the collection of documents and testimony about international mass-murder. The employees are Iben and Malene, two women in their late 20's who are researchers and writers; Anne-Lise, the librarian, who is about ten years older; Camilla, the secretary who is the same age as Anne-Lise; and Paul, their boss. The cast is mostly made of women, and Jungersen makes an audacious attempt to enter the psychology of a female-dominated office (he says he ran the novel past his mostly female writing group). The ingredients of conflict quickly become apparent. These, nice, progressive, enlightened women begin indulging in intimidation, gossip, dirty tricks, bullying, ruthless competition, and soon enough, bloodshed against each other. It begins when Iben and Malene receive e-mailed, anonymous death threats, possibly from Mirko Zigic, a notorious, still-at-large Serbian war criminal. But the possibility emerges that they were sent by someone inside the office. And for what they think are the best of reasons Iben and Malene begin to make Anne-Lise's life a living hell. Jungersen adroitly connects the small-scale subjects of workplace bullying and the so-called "mean girl" phenomenon with ruminations about the large-scale subjects of the psychology and practice of genocide. Jungersen does this by including several articles written by Iben about notorious 20th-century atrocities like the Holocaust, the post-war terrors inflicted on the German populations of Eastern Europe (which are still little understood), Stalin's purges, and of course the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990's, which plays a prominent part in the story. It becomes blazingly obvious to us that the women are participating in the same behaviors which contributed to the genocides. The very dark irony is, of course, they of all people should know better. But each of them have secrets, and private shame. One comes to believe that we are all "rats, without free will, who will tear each other to pieces if trapped in a cage together." (That character later turns out to be a nearly psychotic murderer, which could make him or her a little unreliable.) The climax lurches a little into Hollywood-style melodrama, but this is made up for with a brilliant little final twist in the epilogue. Jungersen keeps his surprises coming fast and furious, so this is tremendously entertaining in a very macabre way. Readers of Fight Club: A Novel and viewers of Mulholland Dr. are going to be a little ahead of the game, but that's OK.

I mentioned what I believe is the buried Christian theme of the book. "The exception" of the title turns out to be the possibility of a genuinely unselfish, indeed self-less act, which is unthinkable in the world-view of most of the characters in the novel. But it occurs at the end, and is promptly and forcefully denied by one other particular character. The whole novel is haunted by the absence of this "exception." A crucial scene occurs in one of the series of flashbacks which deal with Iben's kidnapping in Africa. While in captivity she encounters a group of African Christians singing hymns. One of the hymns is about the self-sacrifice of Jesus, and Iben recognizes it "from a record album her father used to play when she was a child." For a moment, she is saved from the torments of this fallen world and transported into another reality where deliverance is possible. It doesn't last. But I think Jungersen wants us to feel the ache of its loss. They say most tough-guy writers are really old softies at heart. I think "The Exception" is an elegy for the death of love in the modern world.

I bought The Exception on a whim after seeing a positive review of it in the New Yorker this past summer, and it turned out to be possibly the best contemporary novel I've read in the last couple of years; I read the last 200 pp in a day. The prose is clean, spare, taut, the characters well drawn. The use of the Danish Center for Information on Genocide is fantastic--the novel is presented as a thriller, and it is in a way, but really it's a close examination of office politics through a masterful use of multiple points of view. I realize that description doesn't sound all that thrilling in itself, and I actually wasn't sure Jungersen would be able to adequately connect the meditations on the horrors of genocide (represented in the book through a number of DCIG articles, which appear in their entirety) with the petty gossip, backbiting, and bullying that occurs in a contained social space like an office, but the results are positively chilling and thoroughly thought-provoking. With the threatening e-mails, it's technically a whodunit, but really, whodunit is not the point. Really, it's about the darkest corners of human nature, and it's unflinching. Highly recommended.

This novel embeds a story about a painful and challenging small office environment inside a larger meditation the nature of evil and human cruelty. The office -- the fictional Denmark International Genocide Center -- provides both the setting for the office plot and the mechanism for explorations of organized violence in Nazi Germany and Yugoslavia, among other locales. Somewhat reminiscent of Skvorecky's now out-of-print, "Miss Silver's Past" and extensively researched -- the author's working knowledge of the literature is impressive -- the novel explores the burden of evil's memory, the relationship between members of a group and "the other", and how the former can mobilize against the latter.

Iben and Marlene, two old friends from college, share a tight personal relationship in the small 5-person office, a relationship that has effectively pushed librarian Anne-Lise to the boundaries, both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, Camilla, the office secretary, is still struggling to leave behind a painful past in which she was bullied in school and abused by her war criminal boyfriend. Iben, who serves as the primary vehicle for the author's meditations on violence and evil, recently returned from Africa where she was briefly held hostage by a disenfranchised minority group.

The plot begins when Iben and Marlene each receive a threatening email in which the anonymous sender attacks them for their hypocrisy and self-importance, and warns that their days are numbered. Both come to believe that the emails originated from a wanted Serbian war criminal, but when charges against him are dropped, their suspicions turn to their colleagues, thus initiating a silent psychological assault on Anne-Lise, who each (perhaps guiltily) believes has reason to hate them.

The book combines painful descriptions of the intra-office relationships between the women -- at times I felt a layer of dread descend over me -- with a sharp and disturbing assessment of how people behave in dark times. Drawing in particular on Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101"Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, Jungersen reiterates the importance of peer relationships in perpetuating inhumanity and raises the particularly challenging question of "what would you do in this situation."

Ultimately, the novel picks up speed as it goes, moving from philosophy to thriller and culminating in a startling twist at the end. At times I could not put it down, and at others I dreaded picking it up again. Christian Jungersen has written an extraordinarily complex and troubling novel that deserves a broad readership.

Christian Jungersen's ambitious novel, "The Exception," is beautifully translated from the Danish by Anna Paterson; her use of English vernacular is natural and effortless. The story deals with a horrifying subject--genocide--examined through the prism of an ordinary office and its four combative employees. Working at Copenhagen's Danish Center for Information on Genocide are: Iben Hojgaard, information officer, Malene Jensen, project manager, Camilla Batz, secretary, and Anne-Lise, librarian. The center's mission is "to collect data about genocide and make it available, both in Denmark and abroad, to researchers, politicians, aid organizations, and other interested parties." Malene is very close to Iben, whom she met in college; in fact, she Malene got Iben her job at the DCIG.

Under the leadership of Paul, their self-serving boss, Malene, Iben, Camilla, and Anne-Lise study acts of past genocide as well as those occurring today. There are innumerable examples of man's inhumanity to man, such as the ethnic cleansing that took place in the former Yugoslav states, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan and Darfur massacres, the annihilation of millions of Cambodians by Pol Pot's regime, and the wholesale slaughter ordered by the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. The center's staff not only compiles and organizes countless documents and books about these subjects, but they also write papers, prepare exhibitions, organize conferences, and assist researchers.

One would think that doing this humanitarian work day after day would sensitize the women to one another's feelings, but the opposite turns out to be true. Little by little, the four turn against one another and engage in a game of psychological warfare that ultimately turns deadly. For some inexplicable reason, Malene, Iben, and Camilla decide to gang up on Anne-Lise and they make her life unbearable. They exclude her from their conversations, talk about her as if she is mentally ill, spread false rumors about her "alcoholism," and accuse her of committing vile acts, such as sending a series of threatening emails. They even gaslight her (manipulate her into questioning her own sanity). Anne-Lise, who is married with two children, is aghast at the bullying and she frequently cries bitterly to her husband, Henrik. He urges her to fight back, but she finds it difficult to stand up for herself and her misery is beginning to affect her home life. Malene, who is crippled by repeated and painful bouts of arthritis, is pretty and attracts men easily, but she fears that her boyfriend is planning to leave her. Iben is secretly jealous of her friend's ability to flirt and attract admirers effortlessly, since she has had no romance in her life for quite a while. Also troubling Iben are the horrific memories of her recent captivity in Kenya, where she was held hostage and nearly killed. Iben has a history of depression and panic attacks, and she is obsessed with reading books about abnormal psychology. Camilla, too, harbors a dark secret involving her intimate relationship with a Serbian war criminal.

Interspersed throughout the novel are Iben's superbly written articles about the psychology of evil. She poses the frequently asked question: How can previously law-abiding citizens take up arms, kill their former neighbors, and then manage to live with themselves afterwards? Iben summarizes the classic works of Hannah Arendt, Raul Hilberg, Stanley Milgram, and Daniel Goldhagen, each of whom offers a theory about why ordinary citizens can suddenly turn bestial. These riveting and informative passages are some of the most memorable in the book, and they serve as an ironic counterpoint to the evil deeds that infect an agency dedicated to combating man's inhumanity to man.

At five hundred pages, "The Exception" is a bit long and repetitious, and the conclusion is muddied by a few artificial and far-fetched plot developments. Jungersen tells his story from various points of view, which makes learning the truth especially difficult. At one time or another, each of the protagonists doubts her own senses, and the reader begins to wonder if anyone can be trusted. The internecine warfare between the four women is vividly portrayed and the descriptive passages carefully crafted. Christian Jungersen seems to be saying that each of us is capable of behaving maliciously under certain circumstances and that "victimizing others is part of human nature." Our perception of ourselves and others is fluid and can change when doing so contributes to our self-esteem and even our physical and emotional survival. Some readers may understandably protest that comparing office politics to heinous acts of mass murder is at best illogical, and at worst, in poor taste. However, no matter how one reacts to the book's unique premise, "The Exception" is a compelling and provocative work that explores a number of significant and thought-provoking issues.

For a five hundred page book, it's no mean feat to say that the first 400 pages that Jungersen delivers are taut, pacy and a bit on the cruel side. But why not, even though the book takes place in an office in Denmark that deals in the study of genocide, the women working there find that their own actions are softer echoes of the very crimes they examine. So far, so good. The parallels are well drawn, but the characters less so as they each begin to unravel. Jungersen presents us with the possibility that all four of his central characters are mentally damaged, a tough pill to swallow in a book that seemed rooted in reality in its opening pages. In the last hundred pages, having cooked up a tense storm in the quiet little office, Jungersen gives in to the inevitable and brings in charcters from other quarters to push the plot towards its conclusion. The conclusion, unfortunatley, is more reminscent of a hour long TV detective show than the brilliantly introspective opening chunk of the book. Still, definitely worth a read.

Its been a while since i've read a book that's kept me up, and kept me so interested till the end. I do hope the
authors' first book gets translated soon, so i can read it. Thoroughly enjoyable, makes you think, and wonder
about human nature.I can't recommend this book enough.

The Exception is a clever, compelling and complete novel. It is an intimate exploration of human behavior and its fallout on others. The information provided on world wide genocide and the psychology of evil gives the novel added dimension. A unique and intelligent thriller creates a tension throughout the book.

I kept guessing until the final page. Jungersen skillfully weaves a story that I was baffled by up to the end. All of the strange goings on do finally make sense, but not before we've been led down a few stray paths. Highly recommended.

I rated this book five stars because it is stunning in the way it gets under the skin and forces one to begin to look at how small relationships matter in a daily environment just as much as big ones. I found myself re-examining my position in the workplace, and how I interact with colleagues. The psychology behind the story simply is incredible and it forces introspection in a way few works can. It is a must read!