Assisted Living

Teratologen%E2%80%99s first book to be translated into English situates itself in an insidious series of frames in the fantastic tradition pioneered by such gothic novelists as Mary Shelley, opening with a translator%E2%80%99s note, a preface by the author%E2%80%94wherein he claims the text that follows was found and entrusted to him by %E2%80%9Ca dear friend with exquisitely cruel tastes%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94, and a foreword by that same friend who promptly proclaims, %E2%80%9CLast summer I murdered an eleven-year-old boy%E2%80%9D by the name of Helge. The bulk of the book is supposedly the murdered boy%E2%80%99s manuscripts, titled Assisted Living, wherein he writes of his late pederast grandpa, Holger Holmlund, the outcast devil of the Swedish town of Skellefte%C3%A5. The book proceeds in an episodic fashion chronicling Helge and Holger%E2%80%99s evil exploits. Teratologen%E2%80%99s prose is hyperbolic, hysterical, and horrifying, peppered throughout with highbrow literary allusions and American and Swedish pop culture references alike. Already an infamous bestseller in Sweden, the book seems calculated to offend just about everyone. A studier of monsters %C3%A0 la Henry Miller, Teratologen makes one believe in the possibility of literature to still deliver an electric shock, but in this case readers will likely be left feeling nauseous. (Jan.)