Wolff’s second novel, which won Sweden’s August Prize, has now been translated as The Polyglot Lovers by Saskia Vogel – an impeccable pairing, given Vogel’s previous form with disrobers of the misogynist regalia (see her translations of Lena Andersson, Karolina Ramqvist and Rut Hillarp) ... The novel moves around itself with a sort of ceremonial power. Recurring elements, such as fire, deftly gauge the temperature of female seething ... The novel as a whole is enveloped in a somewhat gothic, sensuous atmosphere, reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier. The Polyglot Lovers is a quiet rapture – unsparing, startling, mesmeric, and told with the soberest of grins.
... incendiary ... the book boldly, pungently and incisively chronicles sexual misadventures, artistic ambitions and a drastic decline ... This is a novel full of colorful and candid characters who are eager to speak their minds and quick to flaunt their oddities. Through three markedly different voices, Wolff examines gender power play ... Not all hangs together, and even less makes sense. But Wolff’s constant supply of fire, bite and wit are compelling forces that propel us through all three of her riotous acts.
Mr. Houellebecq’s books diagnose the soullessness of contemporary liberal democracies, where people futilely seek meaning for their lives in pornographic sex. The Polyglot Lovers shifts the focus from Mr. Houellebecq’s destructive men to the women who are both victims of and accomplices to the cycle of narcissism. In Ms. Wolff’s telling, intellectuals—the writers and theorists who wax poetically about falling in love—are the worst of the abusers.
References to writers from Proust to Michel Houellebecq underscore the novel’s inquiry into the uses of literature. A sharp-eyed, sometimes surreal, often funny take on male-female power dynamics.
Wolff is exuberantly tasteless and cynical ... This is all totally improbable, but the impossibility of the story seems quite deliberate ... Wolff’s writing is pared down and laconic; Saskia Vogel’s translation is excellent and perfectly conveys the haut-cynicism of the original ... The result of all this cleverness and torment is a highly enjoyable absurdist comedy about love and desperation, and male geniuses who are feted, and female geniuses who are ignored—and how despite this invidious state of affairs, we might at least agree that book reviewers are the worst people of all. That is, apart from novelists.
Wolff obviously has something to say, vividly demonstrating that even the white heterosexual man's perspective is entirely built up on the oppression and exploitation of others (specifically women here) ... Wolff is sharp and sly with her flawed figures ... an amusing take on modern life (literary and otherwise) and relationships between the sexes. If not a contra-Houellebecq, so at least Wolff suggests Houellebecq is the contemporary male template, with both her main male protagonists followers of the French master -- a blind alley/dead end street whose temptations are nevertheless too hard for Ruben and Max to resist. Yet Wolff's female figures also have their flaws and weaknesses, from Lucrezia harping on her physical ones to their uneasy relationships with various men in their lives ... All in all it makes for an interesting polychromatic fiction, a surprisingly ebullient story -- carried along nicely by Wolff's entertaining and easygoing presentation -- in a cleverly structured novel, its three separate parts neatly coming together by the end. It's certainly enjoyable reading.
A new novel by the Swedish author reads like a caricature of sexism in the literary world that ends up being as sexist as its misogynous protagonist ... At no point does Wolff work to develop his character or to provoke empathy ... The problem with writing a novel about a sexist jerk, though, is the sheer amount of time the reader has to spend with that jerk ... The sentences feel mechanical, the dialogue drags, and the characterization and description are flat and vague ... This descriptive dullness cannot be laid at the translator’s feet ... There is no seamless communication to be found in The Polyglot Lovers, nor is there seamless communication between book and reader. The flat language and narrative structure make empathy with Ellinor and Lucrezia challenging ... Her feminist critique gets lost ... The novel submits to the male ego.
... a strange, disjointed book ... Whether any of this comes together in the end is anyone’s guess. Wolff’s prose is whip-smart and deliciously cynical about Max, Michel Houellebecq, and men like them—but you still have to spend a lot of time in their company ... Wolff’s book is smart, funny, and sad in turns, but the point it’s making—and it seems to be trying very hard to make a point—isn’t always in view.
... galvanizing ... Wolff orchestrates her divergent plots into riveting harmony, but more striking is the audacity with which she reveals Max and Ruben’s reckless egoism ... Wolff’s novel proves the necessity of cultivating such a specialty. Firing on all cylinders from beginning to end, this story pulses with intellect and vitality unmatched by the literary barons it deposes.
