A Swedish family at war, tales from the Asbo frontline, and an affecting memoir of brutality and hope
The Family Clause
Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Harvill Secker, £16.99, pp320
A man dreads the arrival of his critical, overbearing father, but a family agreement entitles the elderly patriarch to stay in the family’s Stockholm apartment whenever he visits. These visits are not happy affairs and the unnamed son – a stay-at-home dad who has lost his professional way – wants to revoke the agreement. What follows is a claustrophobic and melancholic portrayal of a dysfunctional family, in which the narrative drama never quite lives up to the novel’s foreboding tone.
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