Set in a temporary psychiatric care home for young people in Copenhagen, Fine Gråbøl’s debut novel, What Kingdom, is fragmented and poignant, employing an unnamed twentysomething narrator to chronicle the comings and goings of patients and staff via lyrical bursts akin to diary entries. “I forget a lot,” the narrator, herself a patient, admits early on when explaining how she was once told to “write important things down” before starting electroconvulsive therapy. Thus, her entries record major life changes and unexpected trips into the city, yet an abundance of chapters — some as brief as a single sentence — find equal comfort in the mundane: an examination of the home’s furniture, or listening to a fellow patient fiddle with a karaoke machine. By its conclusion, the slim volume relies far less on plot than even the most literary of novels, concentrating instead on relationships between characters and the blurring of roles at a home dogged by personal demons. Despite its hazy final pages, the novel flourishes in its honest look at life in recovery, guiding readers through everyday transgressions with an astute eye.
This is not to say that nothing happens in What Kingdom. The first half of the novel contains numerous scenes between the narrator and Thomas, the section leader for the home and her personal contact person. At the book’s midpoint, Thomas announces that he has decided to resign from his position, and this change threatens the narrator’s tenuous life balance. But rather than abuse this twist for tropey farewells, Gråbøl frames their relationship as one questioning the limitations of personal connection. “I know I shouldn’t attach myself to people you can never ask about home and family or their new love interest, their kid’s birthday, or their swimming every Tuesday,” the narrator says, referring to Thomas and other employees. She reflects on how proximity within the home presents ideas of friendship, even when a patient knows boundaries exist within their shared experiences. This observation counters a multitude of daily exchanges at the home, where employees frequently act as colleagues to patients. While figuring out the facility’s weekly meal plan, the narrator notes that meal day is, “an occasion where the hierarchies of staff and residents aren’t as conspicuous as they usually are. The relationship between the looked-after and the lookers-after is momentarily blurred.” We see this further exploited when staff and patients conduct weekly meetings, when they travel together to purchase groceries, when a mix of staff and patients forms a band and rock out at a charity run, and when night nurse Mark warmly greets the narrator, who divulges, “He always seems so glad to see me; I love that, as if we were just friends.” Adding to this suggestion of camaraderie is a Lord of the Rings film poster the staff has hung in a common area. Tolkien’s tale follows a ragtag group of adventurers far from home as they learn to trust each other, and the poster’s placement in the care home may suggest similar attitudes on the part of the staff. However, while the narrator and her fellow patients unite at times with employees, their final journeys remain internal, and no amount of friendship or parity with staff — be it real or implied — will ultimately solve their traumas or personal quests.
Branching from this throughline is a second one that reinforces repetition within a patient’s life. Routine is meant to help reintroduce residents to the outside world, but these recurrences — daily medications, the revolving door of day and night staff, and the shuttling of patients in and out of the hospital as they inevitably relapse — also allow Gråbøl to continue eschewing melodramatic bloating spotted in similar stories. Rather than linger over relapses or suicide attempts, most are barely mentioned by the narrator, including her own halfhearted suicide bids, which are recounted as short paragraphs, light on detail. The only time the narrator digs into such topics occurs when she reflects on her early overdoses, and even these are referenced without sheen. When fellow patients Marie and Waheed are removed from the group home for hospital stays, their absences are relegated to asides, the way a housemate might mention another has left for a weekend trip. Where less confident authors manipulate moments of rock-bottom misery to wrench the audience’s heartstrings, Gråbøl refuses to let ailments define her characters. These setbacks become part of the fabric of the facility, the ebb and flow of each day. Such frankness also fashions a narrator fully aware of her own tics and shortcomings, who dips into darkness without warning, yet who otherwise observes the world with transparency.
Sandwiched between staff interactions and personal struggles are long stretches where nothing remarkable happens in What Kingdom, where the routine mentioned above takes over, and it is here that the language sings. Much of this is thanks to Martin Aitken’s careful and vibrant translation of Gråbøl’s original text, but it is Gråbøl, of course, who meticulously structured the novel, painting portraits of the ordinary with poetic flair. For instance, while describing fellow patient Hector, the narrator adds a seeming non sequitur: “the heart is wasteland, vast.” As she moves about the home, she observes, “The long corridor brings me a promise;” when she spies on a conversation, she does so “like a burglar;” before leaving a common space, she “put[s] the bookshelf on like an apron;” and when a rainstorm hits, the droplets are “applauding, ecstatic.” These graceful lines catch the reader’s eye, goose otherwise plain sentences with a sense of wonder, and suggest the whimsy tucked away within the narrator. Gråbøl supplements these verbal swerves with terrific uses of inventory that foster action at the level of narration. A list of items carried by nurse Mark in his hoodie pocket speaks volumes to establish his personality: “Syringes, keys, pills, alarms. A packet of white Prince 100s. Fisherman’s Friends. A shiny metal Zippo lighter. His season ticket for the train. A kid’s orange hair tie.” The first four items describe Mark the employee, but as the inventory continues, the texture deepens to reveal Mark the smoker, Mark the commuter, and Mark the father. This packed catalogue encapsulates a life in a few words, and something similar occurs when Gråbøl’s narrator runs through the list of items found in her bedroom early in the novel:
“… a desk, a chair, an armchair, a bed, a small table next to the bed. A ceiling lamp, a lamp on the desk, another on the bedside table. A glass-fronted cupboard containing a few cups and mugs, glasses, plates, a set of knives, forks, spoons. Moreover: various items of clothing, some bags and other things stuffed away in the storage space by the door. Approximately ten books, two general interest magazines.”
Like the inventory of Mark’s pocket, the roster here starts with the generic before turning specific, and in doing so, it illuminates, if perhaps only slightly, facets of the narrator and her possessions. While relatively spartan, she nevertheless owns enough books and magazines to warrant a mention. While she owns clothes, she isn’t chained to fashion. Compare this to a later inventory of items in her space — “Empty cigarette packets lie crumpled around the room. The stone of a peach, mugs with dregs of cold black coffee. Not much daylight here, the blinds are drawn” — and one can also see how these lists reflect the narrator’s state of mind without her having to verbalize her struggle.
When originally published in Denmark, Gråbøl’s novel carried the title Ungeenheden, which translates to The Youth Unit. This new title comes from a line found in the 1999 film adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, itself a story of young people facing psychiatric care that the narrator has watched countless times. One of the characters in the movie asks, “What world is this? What kingdom?” The questions originate, albeit in Latin, in the T.S. Eliot poem, “Marina,” which took inspiration from Shakespeare’s play Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Regardless of origin, the questions, once repeated by Gråbøl’s narrator, drape themselves over the novel like a heavy blanket, evenly warm and suffocating. The title change juxtaposes Gråbøl’s Danish reality with the luster of Hollywood’s attempt at replicating reality, and in this battle, Gråbøl ultimately wins, even if not everything in What Kingdom works. The novel’s closing pages, for example, are frustrating, not for their lack of closure, but for their lack of sharpness. Still, the positives far outweigh the minor miscues. Fine Gråbøl understands the challenge of recovery. She inserts her voice into the conversation of psychiatric care, and in doing so, she upends tired mental health clichés. Sometimes, she seems to say, life is a series of two steps forward, one step back. The challenge is in remembering that you are nevertheless still advancing.
[Published by Archipelago Books on April 16, 2024, 152 pages, $18.00 US paperback]