The Details by Ia Genberg

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety.

In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend.

Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.

Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? The Details is a novel built around four such portraits, unveiling the fragments of memory and experience that make up a life. In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.

REVIEWS

"Textured insights into human nature."― The New Yorker

"This beautiful, moving book unfolds in four stand-alone portraits that, together, yield a sharp, poignant picture of the portraitist. The narrative blurs the boundaries that separate memoir from fiction, past from present, and self from other, which evokes the spell of fever during which it was written. The miraculous sort of novel that fuses with our personal memories and becomes part of us." - Hernan Diaz, author of TRUST

"The Details is about relationships, about love, about parents and children...about all of it. The little observations about being young, and about growing up, and about getting lost by accident, and getting lost on purpose, searching for yourself in everyone else...damn it, I've underlined half of the book. I wish I could write like this." - Fredrik Backman

PRODUCT DETAILS
Hardcover Edition
Publisher: HarperVia
ISBN: 978-0063309722
Pages: 144