When I started reading Føtexsøen by Lone Aburas I quickly realized that this book ought to be a story I could really identify with. The plot centres around a female character, Lene, who is in almost exactly the same position as I am at the moment:
- Taking time off from her studies to writeEven though Lene feels stuck in her writing as well as in life she stubbornly applies to Forfatterskolen* for the 5th time . I myself am applying this year! Am I this girl in 3-4 years? Oh, the horror.
- Working on the side at a job that doesn't interest her much (I prefer my library over her Føtex any day, though!)
- Mostly ending up working and wasting time rather than writing as much as she planned to
I'm guessing that this book is more autobiographical than it is fictional and in that way it works in a sort of two-sided fashion: Lene, a girl and aspiring writer, often complains that she doesn't want to write about boring daily life, that she hates these kind of books. Instead she works on a novel project about all the famous writers of Denmark going down with a ship far ashore leaving only aspiring writers and other mortals to take their places. Abura's book then goes and does the exact opposite with it's portrait of this bland young woman and I'm guessing that this meta thing is meant to bring some humour to the book and to make it seem clever.
Yet I do feel that the joke ends up being on Aburas - the book *is* kind of boring. Lene *doesn't* really ever end up meaning that much to me and I find myself feeling really happy each time somebody puts her in her place for being too hateful or judgemental of her surroundings, be it her boyfriend or a writing teacher.
In the book is also a great deal of stories from Lene's family and background growing up with an Egyptian father and a Danish mother. This part of the book is written as a story unfolding alongside Lene's present life. It's funny and sometimes interesting to hear about her upbringing with her silly yet heartwarming father struggling to understand Danish culture and build a proper home for his family - at some point in the book by owning a hotdog stand even though he doesn't eat pork. But I have to argue that this storyline doesn't really relate or matter to the story that is being told about our main character's present. I do see the obvious "She grew up to feel confused as to who she should be and feeling lost in life"-kind of thing, but it's just too easy to go there IMO.
In spite of my critique points I did read this book at the perfect time in my life and as it sometimes made me smile and identify with the main character's writing issues, it didn't leave me stone cold and I'll give it a 2½/5
*Forfatterskolen is the only proper writing school in Denmark with a very limited number of accepted new students each year
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