A Swedish classic of psychological drama. Swedish novelist Stig Dagerman's A Moth to the Flame (1948) opens with a funeral. Twenty-year-old Bengt's mother, Alma, is to be buried. It's a time of guilt, anger and mixed emotions as the family remembers the often neglected Alma. Bengt tries to cope with the loss of his mother, and he has his sympathetic and gentle fiancée, Berit, to help. But things take a dark turn when he discovers that his father, Knut, has been seeing another woman, Gun, a cashier at the local theatre. Bengt becomes both attracted to and repulsed by Gun. His emotions bounce violently between love and hate, keeping him in a state of permanent, unresolved distress. Stig Dagerman wrote a series of highly regarded novels in his early twenties, suddenly stopped writing, and five years later tragically committed suicide at the age of thirty-one. A Moth to the Flame, a work of staggering emotional maturity, was published when the author was in his mid twenties. It's a brooding, dreamlike work of psychological interiors. The novel has no real centre of gravity and rather floats like a miasma, drenched in Freudian gloom, with its themes of guilt, desire and traumatic family relationships. The deeply conflicted Bengt has much in common with Shakepeare's Hamlet as he tries to avenge his mother's memory but is unable to set out on any definite course. A mini masterpiece from a gifted writer who died too young. A Moth to the Flame, by Stig Dagerman. Penguin Classics. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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