A review by ellies_shelf
A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson
3.0
Described as a family saga, A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding is a lengthy novel which ostensibly explores, alongside different types of family and their ensuing relationships, questions of neuroscience and humanity's interconnectedness (on a surface level, it's also preoccupied with the climate crisis). The translation is very strong - it reads as though it were an English original (although helped along somewhat by the abundance of UK references and a lot of the action being set in London).
The three central characters are 26 year old triplets, Sebastian, Clara & Matilda. Nominally, the central mystery of the novel is that one of the triplets was swapped at birth - their mother claims not to know which one of them it was, and their father is 'missing'. Matilda and Clara especially are immediately convinced that they each were the swapped triplet. As the mystery is not hard to solve, as a central conceit this is (perhaps intentionally?) weak. We follow the triplets adrift throughout the larger part of the novel - Sebastian "clinically depressed" and working at an institute for cognitive science in London, Clara on Easter Island living in a colony of climate-crisis end-timers, and the synaesthete Matilda (whose storyline is the least developed) on holiday in Sweden with her partner and his daughter.
After revealing the event which triggered the triplets' separation, Svensson increasingly builds up eerie 'connections' between the three storylines and between past, present and future which hint that there is a 'system' underlying the events of the novel. She relies heavily on secondary characters to do this: Jordan, the 'leader' of the camp where Clara stays on Easter Island; Elif, a former child star Clara also meets there; Jennifer Travis, a cicada-obsessed colleague of Sebastian's; and especially Laura Kadinsky, one of Sebastian's patients at the institute, who enjoys a fairly developed and achingly middle-class secondary storyline.
This is a story which spends a long time strongly suggesting there is going to be an 'Aha!' moment without any payoff. Although the prose and characters are Franzen-esque, Svensson's raided the 'quirky' toolbox for this one - and in a novel where you feel like you should be hunting for connections and noticing foreshadowing, it's hard with all the quirkiness to work out what's meaningful and what isn't. Yet this might be the point? Even so, 500+ pages is a long time to teeter on the edge of farcical implausibility. Only 3 stars for the fact that Svensson is clearly a talented writer and for the excellent, seamless translation; the plot isn't really worth anybody's time.
Final, glaring issue for me (which I really hope is down to my own misreading): there is an incident which I would class as sexual assault, and even if other readers wouldn't, it is definitely an example of complete lack of consent and incredible creepiness. But Svensson, almost implying that the victim overreacted due to their own neuroses, later turns it into a 'kooky', 'awkward' beginning to a love affair...?
The three central characters are 26 year old triplets, Sebastian, Clara & Matilda. Nominally, the central mystery of the novel is that one of the triplets was swapped at birth - their mother claims not to know which one of them it was, and their father is 'missing'. Matilda and Clara especially are immediately convinced that they each were the swapped triplet. As the mystery is not hard to solve, as a central conceit this is (perhaps intentionally?) weak. We follow the triplets adrift throughout the larger part of the novel - Sebastian "clinically depressed" and working at an institute for cognitive science in London, Clara on Easter Island living in a colony of climate-crisis end-timers, and the synaesthete Matilda (whose storyline is the least developed) on holiday in Sweden with her partner and his daughter.
After revealing the event which triggered the triplets' separation, Svensson increasingly builds up eerie 'connections' between the three storylines and between past, present and future which hint that there is a 'system' underlying the events of the novel. She relies heavily on secondary characters to do this: Jordan, the 'leader' of the camp where Clara stays on Easter Island; Elif, a former child star Clara also meets there; Jennifer Travis, a cicada-obsessed colleague of Sebastian's; and especially Laura Kadinsky, one of Sebastian's patients at the institute, who enjoys a fairly developed and achingly middle-class secondary storyline.
This is a story which spends a long time strongly suggesting there is going to be an 'Aha!' moment without any payoff. Although the prose and characters are Franzen-esque, Svensson's raided the 'quirky' toolbox for this one - and in a novel where you feel like you should be hunting for connections and noticing foreshadowing, it's hard with all the quirkiness to work out what's meaningful and what isn't. Yet this might be the point? Even so, 500+ pages is a long time to teeter on the edge of farcical implausibility. Only 3 stars for the fact that Svensson is clearly a talented writer and for the excellent, seamless translation; the plot isn't really worth anybody's time.
Final, glaring issue for me (which I really hope is down to my own misreading): there is an incident which I would class as sexual assault, and even if other readers wouldn't, it is definitely an example of complete lack of consent and incredible creepiness. But Svensson, almost implying that the victim overreacted due to their own neuroses, later turns it into a 'kooky', 'awkward' beginning to a love affair...?