Miranda July (the author of All Fours) is more artistically gifted than Moa Herngren (the author of The Divorce). Still, if you are in the mood for a novel about the midlife crisis, I’d recommend Herngren.
For one, The Divorce gives space to both female and male experience of being in their early fifties. Herngren decided not to follow the fashionable trend of turning male characters into props who sit around waiting, supportively and silently, while their wives thrash around menopausally, destroying everything in sight. Herngren’s depiction of the male middle-aged life weariness is nuanced, kind, and very realistic.
Another reason is that Herngren’s characters aren’t rich, clueless bastards. These are regular people who struggle to pay the mortgage and worry about money. Most people can’t just drop everything and start bed-hopping around the country when middle age hits because nobody is rich enough for that. Herngren writes about normal, everyday people, and that makes the book a lot more useful. Middle age is difficult, and The Divorce reads like a handbook of what can go wrong and how to prevent it.
Of course, if All Fours were a literary masterpiece, none of this would matter. But it’s not. There’s talent there but not remotely enough to justify choosing this novel over The Divorce.
I recommend The Divorce very highly, even though the author piles it on way too thick to make her characters as representative of their type as possible. Besides, I’m eager to discuss it, so if you’ve read it or are planning to read, please make yourself known.
Clarissa's Blog 
“I’d recommend Herngren”
I wasn’t that interested in the book until I saw elsewhere that the author is Swedish (and was co-author of a TV series I watched – Black Lake set in the middle of winter in northern Sweden).
I’ve heard a lot of things about the Scandinavian attitude toward divorce (one person told me that most of the time it’s not seen as any kind of big deal… it’s just one way a relationship can work out….) But it seems to be a very big deal for these characters… I’m intrigued….
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It could very easily be an American novel written by a conservative author. Nothing very Swedish about it beyond the currency and the geographic names. Normal, regular people with normie concerns and problems.
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Just finished reading it – a very enjoyable book.
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Thank you for the recommendation, I’m reading it now and enjoying it so far!
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I’m really glad!! Let me know your thoughts when you finish. This novel is a textbook collection of marriage mistakes on both sides. Really spot-on.
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Thanks again for the recommendation, it was a fun read!
Niklas and Bea are over-the-top caricatures, so it is almost a satirical novel, and it is not brilliantly written. But I have to admit it still drew me in and I also feel like discussing it. 🙂
Probably this is not how the author intended it, but in the end, my sympathies were with Bea. Yes she is dumb and shallow, but he made a few mistakes I found hard to forgive. First of all it seems that he never really liked her much, he married her more out of sense of obligation and pity and that is really unforgivable and not fair to her. He also failed to communicate his needs. I don’t understand why he kept the financial problems hidden from her, that is really old-fashioned and weird. He should have stood up for himself far earlier instead of waiting until it was too late. I think Bea would have been willing to change and to be a better partner. Why did he not insist on the trip to Vietnam? Yes she behaved idiotically there and showed very little empathy with him, but he should have made a huge scene at this point and things could perhaps have turned around. Also everything ended so badly for her and so ideally for him that he lost me a the end and should have been kinder to her.
Of course the “excuse” for his behaviour is his family of origin and his mother, who never saw him as a person with his own needs. But he could have stood up to her too, he seemed very weak.
I can imagine that this is a kind of toxic masculinity/feminity of the Scandinavian sort, where men are still expected to be very stoic and women are allowed to be very demanding? It’s possible, I’ve lived there for a bit and the gender roles seemed pretty unhealthy to me. Not all that progressive, strangely, although it might look like that on the surface.
Like you, I liked it that the male perspective was included, in contrast to “All fours”.
And I think the most important message is 1) one should not overreact to small mistakes from their partner and 2) try not to get stuck in a fixed dynamics where one of them is the helper and the other one is the victim. Things need to stay flexible and both should be able to be weak. Both of these things are not easy in a long-term partnership.
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Also (sorry, anonymous by mistake), I now feel like reading more novels about both male and female midlife crisis, do you know of another one?
I know one in German, which I’d love to recommend to you, but unfortunately it has not yet been translated:
https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/the-couple-of-the-century/
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I agree that this isn’t a work of art but still a great read. I disagree, though, that things ended up ideally for Niklas. Like everybody who jumps out of one relationship right into another, he immediately started to recreate the dynamic of his marriage with Maria. Maria is to Niklas what Niklas was to Bea. The infinitely understanding, the utterly self-effacing, the completely supportive partner who is bound to get massively fed up with this role at some point. Niklas gained no understanding or insight as a result of his relational collapse. He simply became Bea. Manipulative, self-centered, and blind to the pain of others.
The ending is unconvincing. The only path for a person like Bea is to start eating her children alive after the divorce. My parents had a dynamic like Bea and Niklas, and there’s no way a person like Bea learns to be content with a diminished existence after a lifetime of eating people alive. But I understand that the writer didn’t want the novel to be too bleak.
This is one of the novels where I liked none of the characters but enjoyed the book royally.
I’m glad you enjoyed the reading, too!!
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Wow, this is a good insight that Maria now behaves like Niklas and he has turned into Bea. You’re totally right! She seems to have no desires and asks nothing of him. And you’re probably also right about Bea, the ending is out of character for her. For some reason the person that made me the angriest though is Niklas’ mother. 🙂 I don’t really understand why. Did you also find her so annoying?
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One can easily imagine Maria exploding like Niklas did a few years from now. Nobody can exist indefinitely in a state of abject servility.
Yes, I detested that mother, too. She’s one of those people who always ally themselves with the strongest, with whomever she sees as the leader of the pack. When Bea is in control, she licks her boots and spits at her own son. But the moment Bea loses power, she ditches her and is now subservient to Niklas. A person without principles, without a point of view. A “follow the leader” type.
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This is really insightful too! Yes exactly, this was what made me so angry. You’re so good at analyzing these things.
I was wondering why I was on Beas side, since you’re of course right she’s manipulative and self-centered. But I realized it comes from my own family dynamics, where my mother was much too understanding of my complicated and manipulative father. So I find it hard to see the mother as the bad one, especially in the end where she clearly suffered and Niklas did not care.
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Imagine how fun it is for my students. We have the best conversations.
I felt terrible for Bea, especially in that scene where she abandons the Christmas tree after realizing that Niklas is taking the girls away for the holidays. Niklas is a bastard because he never explained anything to her, never talked. She was left without having any idea what she’d done wrong. After 32 years and two children together, you can’t just ghost a person like this. You are dishonoring decades of your own life by doing that.
Niklas experienced no personal growth. He swapped a bad, strict mommy for a good, sweet mommy. But he never occupied the role of a grown man.
But yes, one would have to be very steel-hearted not to feel the pain of Bea’s sincere confusion as to why what worked for 32 years suddenly no longer does.
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