Self-Control

The second volume in Stig Sæterbakken’s loosely connected “S Trilogy,” Self-Control moves from the dark portrait of codependent marriage featured in the acclaimed Siamese to a world of solitary loneliness and repression. A middle-aged man, Andreas Feldt, feeling that he is unable to communicate with his adult daughter over the course of lunch, announces on an inexplicable whim that he is going to get a divorce. This impulsive lie does not only destroy Andreas’ conversation with his daughter, but also puts doubt in his own mind about his own existence, shaped by routine and the people around him. Faced with this virtual invisibility—no matter what actions he takes, the world seems to take no notice—Andreas is cut adrift from the certainties of his life and forced to navigate through a society where it seems everyone is only one loss of self-control away from an explosion of dissatisfaction and rage. What follows is the awakening of a glaring suspicion of reality within our narrator’s psyche, as if he has a blind spot somewhere in his memory. Is there something he has forgotten, something he does not want to, or is not capable of remembering?