The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven (2021) by Nathaniel Ian Miller

Book Review

The Memoir of Stockholm Sven(2021)

by Nathaniel Ian Miller

   The Memoir of Stockholm Sven is the debut novel by American author Nathaniel Ian Miller. Owing equal debts to Jack London and Knut Hamsun, who are curiously never mentioned by the characters in any capacity, it tells the story of the life of Sven Ormson, a would-be intellectual who is unhappy working in the factories of Stockholm.  He decamps for a northern mining colony, only to be horribly disfigured in a mining accident.  Disconsolate, he seeks a new life in the even farther north, as a trapper and hermit.

  That is the set up and you won't be surprised to learn that Sven doesn't sit by himself in a cabin for the rest of the book.  People enter and exit his life, and it really is a whole life- the book ends after World War II, with Sven a senior citizen.  Great sub-arctic scenery and plenty of lonely philosophizing.   It's a promising vision from a young  American novelist- literally miles from your typical first book about post-college young people living in a major metropolitan area.  The third act drags and the narrative limps to its natural ending, perhaps in an attempt to evoke the "Memoir" of the title, but it's not a memoir at all, it's a novel, so I question the devotion to the form.