The Bookslinger app has been updated with a new story!
This week’s story is from Love Doesn’t Work by Henning Koch, published by Dzanc Books. Stories hilarious and haunting, characters reckless and wary, wise and wanting- Love Doesn’t Work works absolutely. These stories have a futuristic feel to them – almost a literary science fiction reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. Readers will enjoy their way through Henning Koch’s ideas as expressed by his characters.
Enduring her jet-set life in Sardinia, a woman has learnt to sublimate her erotic longings caused by her husband’s impotence, until a visitor offers a more immediate solution. A claustrophobic banker fears the destruction of his relationship when he discovers a yawning hole beneath the streets of Stockholm. The arrival of a gorgeous Russian piano prodigy inspires a screenwriter to look beyond his treadmill London existence. And while fixing a leaking toilet in the wilds of Sweden, Ingmar Bergman explains the predicament of lovers in a hostile world.
Love Doesn’t Work offers classic storytelling with profound, startling insights into human desire and its shortfalls. Inspired by the ancient Cathars, these seven tales present a vision of life as an inevitable struggle against ignorance, darkness and sexual confusion. Devilish and playful in tone, they leave the reader with a sense of outraged satisfaction and delight.
This is an amazing story in an amazing debut collection. First thing I read by this Swedish author who, like me, prefers English when it comes to entering the space between things and people. Bergman of course is a great tradition to stand in and Koch does not disappoint.