Preteen Angst, Swedish Style

THE SECRETS OF CRICKET KARLSSON
By Kristina Sigunsdotter
Illustrated by Ester Eriksson
Translated by Julia Marshall

I didn’t assume a spot as utopian as Sweden — with common well being care, 5 weeks of paid trip, 480 days of parental depart — might have an issue as banal as imply women. However a couple of pages into Kristina Sigunsdotter’s charming, humorous, deceptively deep center grade novel, “The Secrets and techniques of Cricket Karlsson,” it turns into clear that queen bees are a world phenomenon.

In fact, this being Sweden, the cruelty is gentle. The cool women are “horse women” who gallop across the schoolyard neighing and whinnying, conduct that in America, I can report firsthand, hardly ever qualifies as something remotely resembling cool. The horse women whisper about Cricket, shriek at her rooster pox scabs and, after studying she spends her breaks hiding within the lavatory, christen her Crapula. The sting hurts all of the extra as a result of the horse women have stolen her greatest pal, Noa.

“I’m 11 years outdated and my life is a CATASTROPHE,” Cricket reviews within the first pages of Sigunsdotter’s diary-form e book, the entries illustrated with splendidly evocative drawings by Ester Eriksson. “I acquired ONE HUNDRED AND THREE rooster poxes and needed to keep house from college for TWO weeks. Once I acquired again, my greatest pal Noa had gone off with the horse women. Now she pretends I don’t exist. I hate college and I hate my life.”

This isn’t all that’s plaguing Cricket. There’s her mom, who always sighs in discontent and makes recipes from “Roots & Nuts: Cooking Like a Stone Ager.” A boy named Mitten retains giving Cricket items in hopes she’ll exit with him. After throwing a glass of wine towards the wall at a household dinner, her beloved, eccentric Aunt Frannie lands in Grownup Psychiatric Ward 84 for what seems to be despair. Cricket herself wrestles with anxiety-induced insomnia, which Aunt Frannie calls “the wolf hour.” However it’s the lack of Noa that breaks Cricket’s coronary heart and provides this spare novel, winner of Sweden’s prestigious August Prize, its punch.

“I’ve by no means been in love, or possibly generally with Noa,” Cricket writes. In a drawing titled “Diagram of My Catastrophic Life,” Cricket charts a gradual line from her delivery to assembly Noa after which a plummet after she acquired the rooster pox and Noa “left” her. It’s not accidentally that she seems like a spurned lover. There’s a explicit depth to younger feminine friendships that’s hardly ever depicted in literature (Elena Ferrante however), not to mention kids’s literature. However Sigunsdotter’s trustworthy voice and Eriksson’s subtle and generously distributed artwork come collectively to honor the fervour of those friendships, and the ache that accompanies their dissolution.

Maybe as a result of that is Sweden, nonetheless, light resolutions are reached with minimal drama. Cricket and Noa reconcile and the horse women are put of their place. Mitten falls out of affection with Cricket. The issue of Cricket’s mom’s sighing is solved. Aunt Frannie leaves the hospital and refuses to reply the door or eat, however her despair is quickly ameliorated by a moonlit journey on a horse named Sheriff (a picture that conjures one other heroine of Swedish kids’s literature and her trusty steed). The convenience and innocence of all this felt nearly surprising to me, accustomed as I’m to American novels’ excessive drama and noisy climaxes. However possibly it’s OK for issues to resolve merely. Perhaps that’s how issues work in a utopia.