“Caipirinha med Döden” / “Caipirinha with Death”.

Erica is a successful copywriter, in a happy relationship with her partner Tom. One night Tom tells her that he wants to take a break from their relationship. She goes home and tries to drown her despair in alcohol. Then someone knocks on her door. She opens and meets a man who says he’s Death. (He was supposed to visit the man upstairs, he says, but went to the wrong door.) Erica is by now so drunk that she isn’t even scared.

A few days later (after Erica finds out that the man upstairs has died from a cerebral hemorrhage) Death comes back to visit Erica. They talk. He turns out to be charming and funny, and not at all scary. He sleeps in her sofa, and makes her a luxurious breakfast the morning after. Soon he’s sort of moved in with her, cooks her gourmet dinners and even does the dishes. He asks Erica to accompany him to a few jobs, and after a while asks her to take care of some souls herself. Without thinking twice, Erica uses the opportunity to “solve some problems” among her acquaintances.

It’s weird combination of thriller and chick lit. Mostly chick lit, though: after all, the book is mostly about the love life of a hip young woman, plus some sprinklings of her work life, told in an irreverent tone and with lots light humour. I don’t know if it’s a chick lit thing or not, but I found Erica annoyingly stupid and really couldn’t sympathize with her when things started to go wrong for her.

I like reading about natural forces presented as people, because there are often interesting angles to those stories. Here this plot device isn’t used too well: Death gets to deliver too many philosophical lectures. And Erica herself gets involved in a project about genetic testing, so we get those debates as well. Because of the setting the discussion cannot be anything but superficial and banal. And when Death is joined by the Devil, and later it turns out that Jesus is still alive as well, it all becomes too much.

The story also spirals somewhat out of hand, but the final twist is a good one.

The book isn’t badly written, but it’s like all the other Swedish books I’ve read in the past 6 months: the language is that of a journalist. There are facts and descriptions, but there is no beauty in it. The author has no voice of her own. Disappointing, really.

Bokus. No Amazon links because the book hasn’t been translated into English.