As someone who works in the book publishing industry, I approach books centered around that scene with some hesitation. When I open them, I often find a dreamland setting that sits so unrealistically with me that I don’t care to continue. I sometimes find the opposite in the form of a jaded and cynical landscape about the industry—claims that literature is dead, that there is no new vision, no creative thinkers anymore in the literary landscape. I find few books that encapsulate what bookmaking is about, in all its beauty and frustration and effort and failures. Andromeda has done this in a way that no book has yet accomplished for me; I found what I already know to be true, told and packaged in a way that felt new.
From Swedish writer Therese Bohman, translated fantastically by Marlaine Delargy, comes Andromeda, the story of a young female intern as she begins her time at a major publishing house in Stockholm. Initially finding the job tedious and lacking in fulfillment, this changes when she meets Gunnar, Editor-in-Chief of the publishing house. From one brief conversation spirals a complicated, difficult-to-pinpoint relationship between the two: not quite romantic but decidedly not purely platonic either. Though nothing ultimately comes of the relationship, the story intertwines the experiences of Sofie, the young intern and editor-to-be, and Gunnar, the brooding and experienced higher-up.
Andromeda looks at relationships in a way I believe should always be written: in the gray area. This isn’t to say every relationship sits in some sort of questionable space, but the ones worth reading about tend to. The novel starts out with Sofie’s point of view, which immediately shows she is unsure of herself. She feels her opinions aren’t clear enough, that she can’t verbalize the thoughts she has about the manuscripts she reads. It isn’t until Gunnar speaks to her and gives her an assignment that this begins to shift. This, in some ways, made Sofie a slightly unlikable character, if only because it seemed she viewed herself as useless until a man seemed to think she wasn’t. While perhaps not my favorite aspect, it also makes her highly relatable, as so many of us look for approval and validation in those around us, in people we view as powerful and deserving of that mentor role.
In some ways, I found Gunnar deserving of Sofie’s search for approval. He is heavily experienced in publishing and founded the renowned Andromeda series. He truly believes in Sofie’s talent and vision when it comes to manuscript combing. Yet my hesitation with Sofie’s idolization of Gunnar applies in the other direction as well. It felt that Gunnar was looking for a doe-eyed and dazzled acolyte to follow in his footsteps, to use Sofie to feel he had left a legacy behind, to deny the changes he saw (and hated) in the industry around him. It felt to me that it was almost toeing the line of mutual using of one another, and perhaps that is an argument of this book—that that is all any relationship really is.
At its core, this book is a meditation on the literary scene through two people looking to each other to find a common understanding and comfort. How the publishing industry and literature itself were described was particularly interesting to me. Sofie declares that she thinks literature should be “strong-willed, courageous, written with a clear aesthetic vision,” and I’m inclined to agree with her. She describes the phenomenon of simply knowing when a book is good versus when it isn’t but lacking the words to communicate what it is about that book that classifies it as one or the other, which is a phenomenon I think most readers will come across but one that editors, marketers, and publishers must overcome to do their jobs effectively. As Sofie becomes more engrossed in the world of publishing, Gunnar begins to show his more cynical side, deciding that the books being published now are not doing the literary work that books of the past had done, that authors were not living up to his expectations. As someone early in my career, I found it hard to relate to Gunnar’s view of the book world but could still understand the inclination to want things the way they used to be, to allow the nostalgic yearning to cloud judgment.
Andromeda also grapples deeply with change and how difficult it is to accept things becoming different and that we desperately want to remain the same. When Gunnar leaves the company, drastic changes emerge in the company’s directorship: new rules instated, old alliances shifted, and Sofie is left adrift where she once felt anchored. Bohman does a great job of making the reader feel outraged and frustrated at the changes, even though the changes are likely making the company better and calling out perhaps inappropriate behavior and favoritism that Sofie had so long benefited from. Sofie is relatable in this instance, too; we all feel a sense of “that’s not fair”-ness when things are taken from us, even when we shouldn’t have had them in the first place.
Sofie and Gunnar are two complicated individuals, just like the world in which they exist. Andromeda invites you into the gray area, where technically nothing is wrong, but you aren’t sure if it’s right either. Moved seamlessly from Swedish to English, Delargy brings us into the world of Stockholm and walks us around by the hand as we let ourselves feel the nostalgia, the frustration, the confusion, and the loss between two souls bound by longing and maybe, just maybe, written in the stars.
FICTION
By Therese Bohman
Other Press
Published January 14, 2025
