The Other Woman

Starred review from December 7, 2015
Equally erotic and shrewd, the latest from Bohman (Drowned) reads like a confession, or diary, as it chronicles the budding relationship between a nameless female hospital cafeteria employee, and an older, married doctor. Dissatisfied with her station, and longing to one day complete a writing degree, the nameless woman, also the novel’s narrator, strikes up a friendship with Dr. Carl Malmberg one evening when he offers her a lift home. One ride leads to another, and before long, she welcomes Carl into her shabby apartment. Their affair flourishes and turns increasingly risqué, yet—despite her new beau’s enthusiasm—she regularly wonders how long such a liaison can last without heartbreak. The author’s prose is breathtaking, oscillating between her narrator’s tumultuous feelings toward her lover and the narrator’s curiosity—and occasional disdain—for the world around her. In brilliant asides, she questions her own loyalty toward women, speaks frankly about her sexual aura, considers the ease with which men survive, and shares the rules to being a proper mistress (no lipstick, no perfume, and never adjust the passenger’s seat). Despite the low page count, Bohman finds room to let her characters breathe, and this brings them to life so much that, by the time a third-act twist revealed by the narrator’s new friend Alexandra smacks of too-convenient storytelling, you’re already fully committed to the author’s wild concoction. An elegant, rich take on an age-old narrative.

December 15, 2015
A woman with an almost Dostoevskian loneliness becomes the other woman in this novel of class and passion. The unnamed narrator has a job that's seen as the lowliest in the hospital where she works--she's a food worker who serves and cleans up after the doctors, nurses, and staff. She's also, however, something of an intellectual, with an avid interest in Baudelaire, Thomas Mann, and especially the Dostoevsky of Notes from Underground. She struggles with the meaninglessness of her existence but holds out hope that someday she'll write a novel. Partly out of boredom with her life in Norrkoping, southwest of Stockholm, she begins to flirt with Carl Malmberg, a doctor on staff at the hospital. Malmberg starts giving her rides home, and eventually she invites him in. Thus begins a passionate relationship with the married doctor, who is close to twice her age and has grown children. At first the narrator is carried away by the passion, though she has difficulty separating her feelings about the relationship from her feelings on finally having something to write about in her hypothetical novel. Things become really entangled when the narrator begins to share all the intimate aspects of her relationship with Alexandra, a free spirit who turns out to have connections of her own to the doctor--and a desire to get revenge on him. Philosophical, passionate, and pensive--a novel that explores the psychology of both intimacy and lust.

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