Magnificat
Magnificat
Linnea AxelssonWhen I woke up in the room, covered in darkness and silence, the boy was sitting on the edge of the bed. His eyes were bigger and sadder, marked by what they had seen, and he was covered in something aged and frightening and different than how I remembered him, but still exactly the same nineteen-year-old boy as when he disappeared.
Our unnamed protagonist lives outside Paris with her husband and their daughter. One morning, in a hotel room booked by her friend, she finds the boy who died when he was nineteen sitting there beside her. The friend has asked for an inconceivable favor. During the walk home, the boy is right by her side, along with everything she left behind in Sweden.
MAGNIFICAT is both a directly present and mythically-tinged story of love and sorrow, about seeking a home in a world that remains alien. Linnea Axelsson’s tonality is distinctively lyrical, terse, with hidden depths of emotion. Here she brings forth her poetic style in an ethereal novel that brings Roberto Bolaño to mind.
