As You Would Have Told It To Me (Sort Of) If We Had Known Each Other Before You Died by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, 2017
The magic trick:
A meta plot twist
Remember the popular American movies of the mid-to-late 90s? Remember the way so many of them deliver a gut punch near the end that totally subvert your understanding of what’s what and who’s who. I’m talking Fight Club, Sixth Sense, Usual Suspects, etc. etc.
Well, we get a gut-punch here that may remind you of those movie-going experiences. The result will send you through a meta hall of mirrors, full of layers to unlayer, and a Jekyll and Hyde theme to explore. I think it’s good? I’m still sorting out my thoughts.
And that’s quite a trick on Khemiri’s part.
The selection:
If it had been a normal bachelor party, organized by a normal gang of friends, we would have gone directly to the champagne picnic. But my friends were more ambitious than that. Miro wanted me to have a bachelor party that would go down in history. That became clear to me when the police car arrived at the jail. Or. The place that was supposed to represent the jail. And which must have been somewhere on Kungsholmen, not far from the real jail. At first I suspected that we were in a school that was closed for the weekend, because the forms and the binders in the office where I was booked reminded me of a teachers’ lounge, and the extras who were playing criminals looked suspiciously young. But, when we started to walk through the wide corridors with markings painted on the floor and buzzing light strips on the ceiling, I started to suspect that Miro and the gang had rented a hospital.
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