Reviews

• “A tender portrayal of how the economic crisis of the nineties shaped todays’ underdogs. /…/ [Broken White has] an excellent premise that immediately overturns all expectations of debut novels by Stockholm journalists. /…/ [Broken White is] rich in detail. /…/ [Stefan’s] voice is believable. /…/ The novel’s four parts are skillfully interwoven (…). A detailed study of the aftermath of the nineties crisis is well deserving of its own novel.”

• “Karin Magnusson is at her best when portraying small-town hierarchies and volatile key players. /…/ With the portrayals of a childhood camping trip and what will lead to a vast tragedy, Magnusson shows she is a skilled writer, that she masters the art of writing about the darkest themes, without it being too gooey or cliché. /…/ If Karin Magnusson continues as a novelist, it is in these territories I hope she will tread, with the same minimalistic prose and on-point character portrayals which make Broken White a novel just as much about my hometown as it is about Eksund.”

• “Subtle, easy to listen to, and moving about the contractor Stefan who starts his own business during the eighties’ final, expansive golden years and hopes to be as successful as the grocery store entrepreneurs and tanning salon owners in the town’s enviable (and brilliantly captured!) elite clique.”

• “Broken White is a novel nearly as great as it is pitch-black depressing (which is high praise, because it’s been a long time since I felt so awful after reading a novel). (…) [T]here’s nothing in Magnusson’s prose that bears witness of her journalistic background. Journalist-authors usually write directly and without excesses to move the narrative forward – here it’s the opposite. Magnusson commences by pausing at seemingly insignificant details, prefers writing too long rather than too short sentences, is more interested in nuances than plot. She is simply more of a novelist than a storyteller, and it makes me as a reader invested in her characters and I empathize with them when things go downhill (which they do practically all the time). The plot is enhanced by the foundation being well-executed. /…/ [Magnusson’s] sense of detail delivers a small-town portrait equal parts vivid and entertaining. /…/ [Stefan’s, Tommy’s, and their families’] longing to advance is as understandable as the bottomless sorrow that surfaces when things go south. At this point, Karin Magnusson weaves the 90’s crisis into the text, and in that way the novel also becomes a story about Sweden. /…/ As a whole, Broken White is a very strong work, a book that holds from beginning to end, written by a person who knows what she’s doing. The expectations on Karin Magnusson’s next novel will be very high.”

• “Stefan is pushed around in life by powers greater than himself, like a bullying victim between his tormentors at the schoolyard (…). It’s a completely ordinary life, nothing spectacular takes place – on the contrary. But the attention to detail, the seemingly unimportant anecdotes and memories which appear in such vibrant colors, makes everything feel intensely real. /…/ Stefan and his sad, silent, vividly real life truly exists. (…) it is a truly gripping story.”

• “[Broken White is] tragicomic: the captivity in the illusions produced by a Sweden “filled with creative bankers” is sad to read. But Magnusson offers comic relief as well, when the painters meet the new era’s tanned elite. /…/ I like Stefan’s and the novel’s gloominess (…). Magnusson carries out the novel in such a skillful way that you want to intervene and help Stefan escape the curse that initiates [his] downfall.”

• “Magnusson impresses in several ways: it seems like she really knows something about craftmanship, about blue-collar workers, like the skills and knowledge stem from the author’s own class background. (…) [Stefan] becomes a person I grow attached to. /…/ There are not a lot of novels about small Swedish towns, outside the crime genre. Magnusson succeeds in painting a picture of status hierarchies, class conceit, gossip, and intrigues in a small town in a way one rarely sees. And not only that: Stefan’s adult life stretches quite epically over several decades – from the eighties to today – and for the first time in a long time I get to read a portrayal of the slap in the face regular people were given by the economic crisis of the nineties. /…/ Great social realism! /…/ Broken White is exemplary easy to read, it portrays things seldomly told.”

• “A quiet, beautiful life story well worth acknowledging.”

• “[Broken White] is a tender, sad, and brutally funny story about big dreams that fall apart, passionate love, and strong friendship.”