Culture shock

A cemetery as a meeting place, it was probably done much better. Yet it is among the tombs that Desiree and Benny meet. She, librarian, comes regularly to the grave of her late husband's attempt to provoke a circumstance of grief. In fact she wants him to be released and for not having done enough attention to his bike so he was hit by a truck.

He, lonely farmer in a remote farm, faithfully decorates the pillar of his parents so many plantations it looks like a nursery.

Everything separates them, starting with the respective graves to their lifestyles. Desiree finds his neighbor a kitsch razzle-l'oeil distressing even a vulgar taste, like him elsewhere. For its part, Benny can not "stand him" the next, finding the image of the coldness of the grave of her husband, faded like an old color photo, just the opposite of the women he loves.

Then, a combination of circumstances that intersect their smiles and as an arc of light that arises between them, everything changes.

Thus begins a relationship full of pitfalls confronting diametrically opposed lifestyles. Neither is willing to drop a little ground on its cultural and social certainties. Their games are crisp determinism, their impossible conversations. Yet they are struggling to pass one another despite living standard mismatch.

It is an exhilarating book about the collision of cultures. A novel in two voices making us penetrate with joy intimacy of two people who must deal between their instincts and reason. The text is a series of hilarious and finely brought metaphors have often made me giggle. Just a few about the part of Benny seemed to me a bit too scholarly.

The author has a keen and accurate look at some social and cultural barriers in a playful tone nevertheless filled with great tenderness.

This book had an extraordinary success in Sweden as I understand! Between laughter, blue flower side and the culture shock, I really cracked too.