The Book of Beth
The Book of Beth
But in the midst of all this: tragedy, exploitation. The daughter procures money ”voluntarily”, in order to be able to buy beer.
”I was so goddamn happy and relished treating them.” But nobody accepts her. Beth does not write the words, the all too transparent words, and it is this that makes her text ”literary”, a literary understatement.
All the time it is a question of the child`s love, the child`s desperate love of her mother and her desperate wish to have that love reciprocated.
The whole of Beth`s story, on the surface a savage portrayal of her mother, is beneath the level of the text a declaration of love to that callous, emotionally frozen mother.
Excerpt from Is this a human beeing?
by Bengt Börjesson.
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