She is not wrong, although becoming a poorly paid housemaid to a self-styled, dominating guru named Inger and her family of four is more of an internal journey, with occasional breaks for fika, or coffee. Inger, who is described as looking like “Ronald McDonald’s sister, except without the makeup” blasts Natalie with her over-the-top enthusiasm, before tasking her with shoveling horse shit from the stables and cleaning the family’s house from top to bottom every few days. Starved for companionship, laughter, and cash, Natalie eventually shacks up with a 32-year old mechanic neighbor named Johan, who is renovating his kitchen in irregular stages by purchasing the cheapest possible accessories from Ikea.
Natalie’s bubbly, forceful personality comes through in her prose. From the descriptions of Inger’s faked enthusiasm causing her “eyebrows [to] practically scrape the ceiling” to pronouncing the decor of a home as “nutbag cheerful” the book is populated with genuinely funny one-liners and observations, although the reader must enjoy Natalie’s personality in order to be compelled to keep reading.
As a memoir, SWEDISH LESSONS imparts nothing new or particularly groundbreaking about living and working in a different country. Burg’s observations about how Americans are perceived around the globe as gun-toting, pot-smoking, lawsuit-happy fatsos is amusing, but not particularly original. Natalie’s love life, in which she leaves a depressed, controlling lover and winds up living with a man who partially fixes cars, doesn’t buy her food, and gently sexts with an ex-girlfriend, becomes the framework for the book.
Readers who can laugh at the protagonist’s outlook and style will enjoy SWEDISH LESSONS; those who are looking for profound statements about life will not.
Reviewed by Julia Lai for IndieReader.