It’s a good thing I sat on a crowed train when I started reading this book or I would have tossed it in the trash straight away. My first impression was that this was some pretentious bullshit where the author tries to impress us with his ability to construct long, colourful sentences without any meaning. They didn’t even have any apparent meaning or message in context. What context? There was just a bunch of pretentious sentences strung together without any apparent relation to each other. Luckily I sat in a crowded train and couldn’t just throw the book away in disgust; I forced myself to read for the entire 27 minute journey. And I decided “fuck it, I’m going to finish this book since it was in my bookshelf”. The read-all-unread-books-project came near an abrupt end but I was saved through stubbornness.
It was a good thing that I stuck with it because as I got further into the story the language used started to make sense, sort of. In the book we follow a boy into adulthood. This particular boy had an accident when he was a toddler and injured his head severly. One effect of the accident is that he has a problem forming sentences and writing things down even though he seems keen on doing so. Through out the book there are references to his scriblings which would amount to a diary of sorts and this book should probably be an approxiamtion of his diary hence the incomprehensible language at the start. As the story unfolds and the boy matures so does the language.
The story not only tells the story of how it is to live with the handicap his accident left him but it is also in part a mystery novel ending in him finding out the truth about his accident and a lot more. Incidentally the name of the book translates to “The Sin”. 
This is not a book I’d ever consider reading again but I’m glad that I have read it. It’s not a book I’d recommend for anyone who’s looking for some light reading, actually I find it hard to come up with a reason to recommend it to anybody, but it does have it’s moments and as you read you want to find out more all the time. So if I could endure through the ordeal of reading this book and actually being pleased with myself at the end then perhaps there are other masochists willing to challenge their endurance.
This is an interesting subject for me as I’ve also suffered from head injuries, the last being a serious concussion in 2002 that has me wondering if I’m left with permanent damage.
It’s hard to describe the frustration and anxiety I’ve suffered, as by all outward appearances to friends and family I am the same as always, but inside I know I’ve “lost something” that I’ll never get back. Remembering things and learning new things seem more difficult than before and that has affected my work but I guess I will just have to learn to live and deal with it as the character in the book did.
Posted by Kurt Hans Hierta on May 26th, 2007