... another scalpel-sharp look at a doomed relationship ... absurd and also painfully familiar to anyone who’s ever been there ... one of the key joys (if something so painful can be termed a joy) of this novel – its detailed dissection of a relationship’s dynamics and power-plays ... I am trying to think why these novels have connected so hard with women that I know, and I think that it’s Andersson’s treating of these intense emotional states with gravity and worth – emotional states that are so often gendered, or dismissed flippantly ... The narration throughout is cool and impartial, the prose razor-sharp and precise. Every other sentence begs to be underlined, reveals an uncomfortable nugget of truth ... When a man performs longing, in literature or otherwise, it is seen as somehow noble. When a woman performs longing she’s too often seen as hysterical, unstable, the shrew of Olof’s imagination. But in Acts of Infidelity, Andersson is not afraid to delve properly into the histrionic depths of a crush.
What makes these simple stories of unrequited passion so unusual and gripping is Ester ... she is Andersson’s lab rat, infected with ardor and left to wander through the novels’ maze, bashing blindly into its obstacles. Those obstacles can be delightfully basic ... Her style is blunt, pragmatic, dogged ... Andersson’s critique of the modern order is particularly sharp when it touches on ghosting, that torture by technology ... Like most sequels, Acts of Infidelity isn’t flattered by a comparison with its predecessor. Its rhythms are already familiar; it seems baggy, overlong. (The translation, by Saskia Vogel, is stodgier, too.) ... You can sometimes feel like tearing your hair out watching Ester repeat her painful errors ... Her honesty, usually disconcerting, is also brave; she refuses to suffer with quiet propriety. Yet what’s most touching is that uncharacteristic ellipsis, marking a place that not even words can reach.
... invites readers to join Ester in trying to decide what actually constitutes an act of infidelity ... powerfully captures the frustration of pursuing someone who wishes neither to commit nor to break things off. Ester is a captivating protagonist, and her efforts to produce consistently optimistic interpretations for Olof’s inconsistent actions are at once funny and poignant. There’s only one problem with the novel’s psychological realism: Olof himself. The power of Ester’s passion for this man is foundational to the story, but it’s not a passion readers are likely to share. Ester’s claim that they possess uniquely strong physical chemistry is belied by the novel’s underwhelming descriptions ... Even apart from these scenes, Olof does not achieve on the page the level of charm and irresistibility that would justify Ester’s enduring fascination with him. Still, the measure of our dissatisfaction with Olof is also the measure of our sympathies for Ester, as the novel vividly chronicles the emotional havoc he wreaks upon her otherwise logical, well-ordered life.
... piercing, chilly ... As dryly comic as it is horrifying on an emotional level, the novel will ring true to anyone who has ever loved unwisely. While readers recovering from a breakup may find it hitting too close to home, those ready to swap a propulsive plot for a razor-sharp examination of a deluded mind should find this irresistible.
Andersson (well served by Saskia Vogel’s subtle translation) is an electrifying writer when she is not in potboiler mode. The prose’s many wincing banalities render convincingly Ester’s unhappy, immature imagination which is tempered by the forensic cruelty used to depict her suffering ... humiliating, frustrating – and horribly recognizable. The end makes full use of the anticipated pyrrhic victory, and it is desolating to witness: a human plight that again brings to mind Auden, this time his definition of poetry as 'the clear expression of mixed feelings'. One expects to meet Ester Nilsson again in a few years’ time.
The odd thing is how little Acts of Infidelity acknowledges the events of Willful Disregard ... It’s unclear if this is the portrayal of a character who has completely suppressed the memory of her previous novel-length relationship, or if it’s an effort by the author to make the book stand on its own without requiring the reader to have encountered Willful Disregard. In either case, this willful disregard of Ester’s past leaves a gaping hole in a novel centered on the failure of the main character to understand a situation of the exact same sort as the one she had dealt with in the previous novel. Her refusal to acknowledge that is much less problematic than the novel’s refusal ... But there’s another question: if the two books are so similar, why did I love Willful Disregard so much and find Acts of Infidelity exasperating? Part of it is predictability ... the writing here is sharp as knives and in several ways improves on the previous entry ... deserves more than the repeat performance of Acts, especially given the heights of Andersson’s skill as a writer.
... [an] exhaustive and engrossing anatomy of a romance ... The novel is as much about love as about two competing philosophies of language about love ... The affair, like the novel, has its numbing repetitions, and making readers inhabit this relationship purgatory is part of the point of Andersson’s involving analysis of love’s absurd syntax. This is a cogent, astute novel that will be appreciated by patient readers.
Andersson’s writing, crisply translated from the Swedish by Vogel, is wry and refreshingly unsentimental, but the drawback of a 300-plus page novel charting the minutiae of an underwhelming relationship in excruciating detail is that it is excruciating; the relationship has little going for it, and while this is all too realistic, Andersson’s sharp eye and quick wit cannot quite redeem the experience ... Sharp, if relentless.
