Overdone Swedish Satire

~ The 100-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson ~

The title and author of this novel immediately suggest a quirkily delightful Scandinavian story, along the lines of A Man Called Ove. Indeed, the opening chapter promises the same:

The idea had barely taken hold in the old man’s head before he opened the window of his room on the ground floor of the Old Folks’ Home in the town of Malmköping, and stepped out — into the flower bed.

This maneuver required a bit of effort, since Allan was 100 years old, on this very day in fact. There was less than an hour to go before his birthday party would begin in the lounge of the Old Folks’ Home. The mayor would be there. And the local paper. And all the other old people. And the entire staff, led by bad-tempered Director Alice.

It was only the Birthday Boy himself who didn’t intend to turn up.

Allan Karlsson is a cantankerous, uncooperative resident of the Old Folks’ Home who is disinclined to celebrate or be celebrated. As the above paragraph indicates, he is also a creature of impulse, which leads him out of the nursing home to a nearby bus-stop. A young man asks Allan to look after a suitcase while he uses the restroom, and Allan, again on impulse, takes the suitcase when he boards his bus, leaving behind a worried Director Alice and a furious young man.

Allan exits the bus at a remote stop where he meets another elderly man, Julius Jonsson, a enthusiastic drinker and retired thief. The young man turns up soon enough, and here’s where things get nasty: Allan whacks him with a plank, then the two old men lock him into a freezer where he freezes to death. And the suitcase turns out to be full of money.

This is the start to a life on the run for the two men, pursued by the gang to which the young man had belonged, as well as the puzzled police who are searching for a supposedly lost, helpless 100-year-old man, and the press, in search of a human-interest story. During the course of their wild run, they pick up Benny, a 50-year-old hot dog stand owner; Gunilla (or The Beauty, as Benny calls her), in her early forties; and Sonya, an elephant who lives with Gunilla. Their run is considerably simplified by the large amount of money they carry, so they can travel in a Mercedes, buy a bus, and feed an elephant as necessary. Conveniently, Benny turns out to have had many years of college in many different disciplines, so that he can provide veterinary care for the elephant or medical aid to humans when needed.

So far so good, an absurdist black comedy set in Sweden.

Each chapter of the modern-day escape, however, alternates with a chapter about Allan’s life. And here’s where things get ridiculous as well as derivative. Allan, it seems, after a wild childhood, became an explosives expert by dint of his own experimentation with dynamite. This took him to prison, then Spain during the Civil War, where he ends up having dinner with Franco (‘Francisco’, to Allan). A few years later he is in America, working at Los Alamos, when he just happens to provide a breakthrough idea to Oppenheimer, and ends up having dinner with Truman. (‘Harry’, to Allan. You get the trend). Next he’s off to China, where he helps Chiang Kai-Shek’s beautiful wife.

It’s impossible to read this without thinking of Forrest Gump. The imitative part aside, it also gets very tedious. Mao and Stalin and the Shah of Iran and Churchill are also featured, and guess what, Allan plays a major part in world events in all cases, and has dinner with each. Along the way, he effortlessly learns Spanish, English, Chinese, and Russian. Iran, Indonesia, Paris…De Gaulle, Lyndon Johnson… decade after decade….this becomes both predictable and tedious.

Allan and his cronies cause quite a lot of mayhem, and this book requires a degree of detachment on the part of the reader. Some of the bad stuff happens to the bad guys: the young man is frozen to death, another gang member is suffocated by an elephant. Other characters, Allan’s friends, are also briskly disposed of at times:

Esteban was so exalted that he got up on a rock, grabbed his rifle in his left hand, raised it in the air and shouted: Death to fascism, death to all …

He didn’t manage to finish the sentence before half his head and one shoulder were shot off. […] Allan looked around at what was left of his friend and decided that it wasn’t worth picking up the bits.

No character appears without their entire life story described, each one with additional crazy features. The gang boss’ criminal history of importing Swedish meatball from the Phillipines. The Venezuelan henchman. A typographer who modified 2000 Bibles.

A little of this goes a long way.

Jonasson writes in straightforward language, without flowery words, but with sentence structures that seem unnecessarily complicated.

Allan wondered what the little man did behind the window if he didn’t sell tickets, but he didn’t say anything. The little man probably wondered the same thing. Allan thanked him for his help and tried to tip the hat he had in his haste not brought along.

Of course, this reader cannot tell whether this is also the case in the original Swedish.

Inoffensive but excessive and cartoonish.