Elin Willows

b>Dear Dull Diary
Review of the Nordisk Books paperback (2020) translated from the Swedish original "Inlandet" (2018)

Inlands reads like a selection of diary entries, although they are not necessarily all in chronological order. There is a general time forward plot telling the story of moving to an isolated Northern Swedish town. The young woman has made the move to be close to her boyfriend. The relationship has ended by the time she arrives but she stays anyway. The bulk of it is her day to day experiences in the town, getting a job, going out Saturday nights, watching taped TV mystery series (presumably the use of VHS tape is to signify that this all takes place in the 1980s perhaps?). Hardly anything dramatic happens except for the beginnings of a possible other relationship which is cut short.

Don't be deceived by the 240+ supposed page length. With the amount of blank space in this English language edition, there are maybe only 140 pages of actual text material here. This seems to be an even further expansion of the spacing of the 204 pages of the original Swedish edition. Sometimes spacing can be used to allow the reader to ponder the significance of what they've read. No such inspiration seems to be at work here.

I read Inlands as part of the Borderless Book Club which has been organized by Peirene Press and 7 other UK independent publishers for a 16 week period (May 14 to August 20, 2020) during this current world pandemic situation. It is the successor to the earlier Translated Fiction Online Book Club which was organized for 6 weeks.

There is an Autumn 2020 session planned for the Borderless Book Club from September 3 to December 10, 2020 and the planned book selection can be viewed here.… (more)