BookBrowse Reviews The Room by Jonas Karlsson

BookBrowse:

A Kafkaesque look at Björn, an exceptionally meticulous office worker striving to live life on his own terms.

Have you ever been at work, perhaps sitting in a cubicle under a fluorescent light, and wondered if the coworker sitting across from you was altogether mentally stable? Or have you ever gotten so wrapped up in ludicrous office politics you felt you might be going insane? In his off beat and wholly inspired debut novel, The Room, Jonas Karlsson explores the absurd side of office life, in all its humor and horror, and presents readers with a narrator so self-aggrandizing, so delusional, so crazy, you just have to love him.

Björn was recently "promoted" to a new job at the Authority:

Eventually my former boss came and put his arm round my shoulders and told me it was time to look for a better solution. He wondered if it wasn't time for me to make a move. Move on, as he put it, gesturing upward with his hand to indicate my career trajectory. …Finally I would be able to blossom to my full potential.

From the moment Björn arrives at the Authority, he's pompous, inappropriate to the point of being bizarre, and completely ineffectual. Karlsson successfully creates a first-person narrator so unaware that, as a reader, you can't wait to find out what's going to happen to him next. Especially when Björn discovers a room in the office that no one else can see, a room in which he feels especially powerful, respected, and good-looking:

There was a full-length mirror in the room. I caught sight of myself in it and, to my surprise, I looked really good. My gray suit fit better than I thought, and there was something about the way the fabric hung that made me think that the body beneath it was - how can I put it? - virile.

As Björn's delusions create chaos around the office, and as the administration copes with ridiculous meetings and excessive bureaucracy, everyone's sense of reality starts to go. Perspectives shift and the line between outrageous and reasonable is blurred. The suspense is thrilling and, with short, easy-to-digest chapters, pages fly by. This book begs to be finished in one sitting.

In particular, I enjoyed the witty dialogue and descriptive body language that creates such vivid characters. For example:

Inside the room the air was fresh and cool. I closed the door behind us and stood in front of the mirror with my arm on the filing cabinet. The light in the room definitely made Håkan look worse, while I glanced in the mirror and confirmed that I had retained the same crispness as last time. …

"What did you say?" Håkan said.

"I said I've noticed that you're letting your papers spread out across your desk. Soon they'll be on my side and then you'll be encroaching on my space. I am, as I'm sure you can appreciate, keen to have full access to the whole of my desk. …I would just like you to adopt new habits that don't risk disturbing my work. Do you understand?"

Håkan looked at me in surprise, as if he had been expecting something completely different. …I leaned across the desk and whispered: "Don't think of it as a reprimand. More as an observation."

"What?" he said, and I realized that he was playing along in our tacit understanding to let this stay between us. I nodded, leaned back, and mimed zipping my mouth shut, then locking it and throwing away the key.

The Room has elements of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the television sitcom The Office all while maintaining a fresh and unique tone. A distinct sense of humor and playfulness underlies the plot but doesn't sacrifice the novel's depth. Swedish playwright (and now novelist) Jonas Karlsson has delivered a delightfully eerie debut that will keep a smile on your face as you burn through the pages. I recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a dark sense of humor, who is looking for a quick yet intelligent read, and to anyone who has questioned the sanity of a coworker.

This review first ran in the March 18, 2015 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.