The Exception: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Christian Jungersen (Author)
Key Phrases: pilot jacket, Anne Lise, Winter Garden, Mirko Zigic (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The slow burn of office politics can be just as riveting as international intrigue, as shown in Jungersen's second novel, his first to be translated into English. Iben, Malene and Camilla work in Copenhagen for the Danish Center for Information on Genocide. Even before Iben and Malene receive death threats with Nazi overtones, the three friends had been ostracizing the new librarian, Anne-Lise. Though evidence suggests Serbian war criminal Mirko Zigic has been sending the death threats, the paranoia and fear of the three friends converge to make Anne-Lise the target of rising suspicion. Victimizing is part of human nature, Anne-Lise's doctor tells her when she seeks advice, and the novel hauntingly pursues this idea to its deepest implications. Can people fighting genocide display the same traits as war criminals? What does it mean to be evil? Jungersen (Thickets) explores these questions and others on a very personal level. A complex understanding of people turns what could have been pace-slowing conversations and reproductions of essays on genocide into fuel for a sometimes cruel but always intense page-turner. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Four women--researchers Iben and Malene, librarian Anne-Lise, and secretary Camilla--work in a small office at the Danish Centre for Genocide Information. When Iben and Malene begin receiving threatening e-mails, they immediately suspect that the death messages are the work of Mirko Zigic, a Serbian war criminal whom they've both written about. But they gradually come to believe that one of their coworkers is responsible, prompting them to begin a campaign of harassment and bullying that turns their office into a mirror image of the appalling behavior they analyze on a daily basis. As the backstabbing escalates and alliances shift, the four women show far different reactions to pressure, variously exhibiting bravery, bravado, and submissiveness. Interspersing the narrative with factual reports on the psychology of evil that spawned concentration camps in Germany and genocide in Bosnia, and shifting the point of view among the four women (one of whom may be an unreliable narrator), Jungersen steadily builds up both tension and paranoia. A best-seller in Europe, this thought-provoking page-turner offers a unique spin on office politics. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385516290
• ISBN-13: 978-0385516297
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #449,278 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Victimizing others is part of human nature.", July 11, 2007

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Elegy For The Death Of Love In The Modern World, September 5, 2007

By	R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars astounding, November 3, 2007

By	S. Tanaka (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.