Mirja Unge - The prose is sharp and abrupt and Unge does away with conventional rules of punctuation or dialogue. Her narrative mimics the fractured emotional world of her female protagonists, who are mainly weary and vulnerable, out of sorts with themselves and the people around them. There are flashes of vivid visual brilliance

Mirja Unge, It Was Just, Yesterday, Trans. by Kari Dickson, Comma Press, 2012.
read it at Google Books


The characters in Mirja Unge’s debut collection are all, in their own way, evading something; whether failing to confront the true nature of an encounter, or avoiding responsibilities as a parent, sibling or friend. Abuse, betrayal and neglect lurk beneath a veneer of mutually maintained ‘normality’, waiting for an opportunity to resurface.
Told, in most cases, through the eyes of teenage girls or young women, these stories exhibit a unique prose style that perfectly captures the conversational rhythms, and preoccupations, of their generation. Unge’s soft, winding syntax ushers the reader across the surface of each encounter at an unalterable pace — like the ever-betraying passage of time — whilst deftly hinting at the violence beneath.


On Christmas Eve, a girl stalks an older man through wintery city streets, haunted by their shared past...
In a remote woodland cottage, an eccentric explains to his granddaughter why he shoots cats whenever they make themselves too comfortable...
In a checkout queue, a woman suddenly shows charity to a penniless guy she apparently doesn’t know...
The characters in Mirja Unge’s debut collection are all, in their own way, evading something; whether failing to confront the true nature of an encounter, or avoiding responsibilities as a parent, sibling or friend. Abuse, betrayal and neglect lurk beneath a veneer of mutually maintained ‘normality’, waiting for an opportunity to resurface.
Told, in most cases, through the eyes of teenage girls or young women, these stories exhibit a unique prose style that perfectly captures the conversational rhythms, and preoccupations, of their generation. Unge’s soft, winding syntax ushers the reader across the surface of each encounter at an unalterable pace —like the ever-betraying passage of time — whilst deftly hinting at the violence beneath.

"A breathtaking and intensive read, full of warmth, humor, and darkness."  —Hallandsposten

"Mirja Unge has once again convinced me that she is one of the most important writers in Sweden today."  —Nerikes Allehanda


his debut collection made a big impact in Sweden, particularly with adolescent girls. The protagonists are all young women, so that makes a certain sense, but – in the first-person narratives – they all seem to be the same young woman: slightly dim, with a pervading sense of inferiority, and relentlessly focused on the mundane. "It was nice of them to come and, like, bother about the fact you're turning eighteen and that. I hadn't really thought about it, just stood there in the door." Right. She doesn't think about it much during or after the party either. In "Attic" a naive student hands over all her rent money to a flatmate who steals all her possessions and she's stunned to discover that her "friend" hasn't made the payments after all. Matters improve in the third-person stories ("Four Hundred Kronor", "Ginger Cat"), partly because the larger perspective imposes discipline on the writing, and also because the characters sharpen up a bit in the presence of men. The girlfriends are the problem – that's the depressing chord struck here. - Chris Ross
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/17/it-was-yesterday-mirja-unge-review


Mirja Unge’s debut collection of short stories achieved considerable success when it was published in Sweden. The sixteen stories that make up the collection bear striking similarities and preoccupations. Largely written as first-person narratives, they articulate the female adolescent view on life and relationships.
The prose is sharp and abrupt and Unge does away with conventional rules of punctuation or dialogue. Her narrative mimics the fractured emotional world of her female protagonists, who are mainly weary and vulnerable, out of sorts with themselves and the people around them. There are flashes of vivid visual brilliance. In ‘Four Hundred Kronor,’ the opening lines describe the protagonist’s coat, as it ‘swung round her legs,’ and ‘her handbag gleaming and the hand that held it hard.’
Unge’s stories portray a cityscape that is perpetually cloaked in winter and where sex, violence, drugs and poverty are symptoms of alienation and estrangement. In ‘Oranges’ for instance, a young girl listlessly receives some oranges as an eighteenth birthday present from her divorced father. In the title story, ‘It was just Yesterday,’ another school girl passively describes how she casually lost her virginity to a stranger, while the ‘My Bruv’s Had Enough,’ has a girl confronting an old drug addict brother who has escaped from hospital.
It Was Just Yesterday is both atmospheric and menacing. We are always aware of danger lurking with no possibilities or redemption or resolve. - Reshma Ruia
http://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/?p=1200


This collection was critically acclaimed when it debuted in Sweden last year, and it's true that Unge has an unusual and arresting style that is worthy of recognition. At times, there is real beauty in her writing which often showcases a deeply poetic style and thrusts you into an atmosphere, a world, or a conflict with ease and immediacy. I also celebrate the real and consistent focus on the female perspective; these stories offer a captivating evocation of a young woman's mind and the specific cultural pressures of today's younger generation.
The title story, It Was Just, Yesterday describes the events leading to the teenage female protagonist's loss of virginity. The story has a first person, well-paced, colloquial narrative which employs no direct dialogue; all the characters speak through the protagonist. As such, Unge plays effectively with the power of perspective and creates a rounded, complex and intriguing character for us to invest in.
Thematically, it's also very interesting. There is a real sadness to the story. We watch as the protagonist is cheated out of her virginity with a sense of grief and powerlessness, which Unge evokes beautifully through her use of dramatic monologue. We feel part of the secret sadness our narrator holds. Her first sexual experience is with an older male stranger; a  stranger who gets her drunk to ensure compliance. The exploration of sex as a confusing, violating and loveless experience is treated with a sense of acceptance and realism; a clever comment on the cultural tendency for young women to accept negative sexual experiences as normative.
The story is reflected through the protagonist telling Thea, her best friend, about the experience. The obvious sexual desire she has for Thea is displayed cleverly through her recalling an event when she touched Thea's breast to help her check they were the "right" size. However, the protagonist can't even tell Thea the truth about her sexual encounter with the stranger, because she has to repress her sexual curiosity about Thea. There is a beautiful sense of safety in the relationship between the two girls, which they themselves ironically seem to miss, leaving the reader to question the societal boundaries that stop the two girls safely and innocently sexually experimenting with one another, and not with strange men who control their sexual behaviour rendering them passive.
In The Attic, two university friends live together in an attic flat. Their relationship slowly deteriorates due to the closeness of the space, secretive behaviour and family pressures.
It's a very engaging read and probably my favourite in the collection. Unge really shoots the reader into the claustrophobic attic space, tracing the growing fondness between the young women, through to the eventual demise of their friendship. It's well-paced, well-structured and tense. The distant threat of the father figure is cleverly drawn, the backdrop of suspense and mystery is left hovering beautifully to keep you page-turning. However, the character and the narrative voice are very like that of too many other stories in this collection, including the title story. Once again, the protagonist, a young woman, controls the perspective through a first person narrative and reported dialogue. In addition, the end is slightly unresolved and anti-climatic, leaving character motives unclear. Unge goes for a realist, relatively mundane ending which denies this story its necessary twist.
Norrgarden is the story of two academics staying at a farm populated by a group of artists. The protagonist, again a young woman, very similar to the lead of the other stories, drives the narrative which pivots around her feeling threatened by Mikel, an artist staying at the farm, who watches her in her bedroom one night. The story is confusing in that we only get the one perspective, being denied direct dialogue, and the true inner turmoil of the central character isn't altogether clear. It feels like her relationship with her repressed partner, and Mikel, is contributing to a greater concern, but it is never fully clear what that concern is. The ambiguity is strangely off-putting. Having said this, there are some beautiful poetic images and Unge really throws you into the environment of the story, the farm, the culture, the weather, and she does create a sense of drama and tension, even if it isn't satisfyingly resolved.
I really enjoyed The Roslag Bus. In my opinion, this story showcases the best traits of Unge's writing. A taut, beautifully structured short story in third person which is filled with poetic style but uncomplicated language, evoking the power of momentary thought. Thematically, this is a very interesting play on gender dynamic, and an unusual way of looking at the culture of disbelief which so often faces women who report sexual harassment; Unge plays with the poisonous idea that this disbelief can take shape in one's own mind, germinating self-doubt. A very compact and expertly told short story.
In essence, this short collection boasts a good deal of craft. However, for all its merits, the collection is lacking diversity in character development. It all too frequently feels like we are reading an episodic novel about the same central protagonist in a number of different situations. It's almost as though Unge can't escape her protagonist; the character seems to control and shadow the majority of the stories. I rather like the character - an intelligent, curious teen/young woman, searching for understanding, for identity, observing the world with a detailed and individual eye - but the fact that this character, or at least the major traits of this character command so many of the stories is almost confusing for the reader. It is as though we are waiting for a grand reveal – that all along this has been an episodic surrealist novella.
Nevertheless, Unge is clearly a promising, talented writer, and this collection is well worth a read.      - Kate Kerrow 
http://www.theshortreview.com/reviews/MirjaUngeItWasJustYesterday.htm


My reading life is one author poorer than it should be but wouldn’t be if only Swedish writer Mirja Unge’s novels were translated into English. The only Unge I have access to is a single, highly-stylized story, “It was just, Yesterday,” which was anthologized by Maria Crossan in Elsewhere: Stories from Small Town Europe (2007) for the UK’s Comma Press. Crossan’s excellent introduction invites us to reconsider what “we mean by ‘small town,’” and to question how “and why this seemingly innocuous demographic term—one up from ‘village,’ a couple down from ‘city’—[has] come to function as a pejorative adjective, and as a derogatory description of a particular mindset.” While all ten stories in the collection take this judgment to task—elegantly, interestingly, uniquely—my favorite is Unge’s.
Why? For several reasons: first, because I’m pretty sure the narrator is a lesbian; second, because, if she’s not, she sure is conflicted about the fact that she lost her virginity the night before with a guy she picked up at a corner store while trying to scam strangers into buying her booze. This is that new generation of pre-teen and teenaged girls we keep hearing about: the girls who don’t really know why they keep having sex with boys they don’t know, and who feel so sad and alone inside while hoping someone will find them, and love them, and save them. These girls may end up posting nude pictures of themselves online. Or maybe they are the girls who end up having videos of themselves posted on the internet by the guys who took turns using them all night for the camera, for no other reasons but that she was there, she allowed them to, and they never thought to stop. But this story takes place before all that. This story ends on that crucial moment when the girl’s best friend has all the power, and all she has to say, no matter how she says it, is: I love you. I love you enough for the both of us. And this will not happen again because I will not let it. I love and respect you too much.
According to Comma Press’s website, Mirja Unge “was born in Stockholm in 1973. She received the Katapult Award for her critically acclaimed first novel, Det var ur munnarna orden kom, in 1998. In 2000 she published her second novel, Järnnätter. The same year her novel Motsols (Tide) was shortlisted for the Swedish Radio Award. [. . . And in] April 2007, her debut short story collection was published under the title Brorsan är matt, and received widespread praise for its fresh and idiosyncratic style.” And they’re not lying. I’ve never read a more stylistic story. The language bumps off the page and skids and slides in stops and starts. Not only does Unge pull off these flourishes but she nails teenage angst—though I hate to use the word “angst.” It’s more like . . . incredibly emotional emptiness. It’s that feeling you have when you break up with your boyfriend of two or three years because no matter how many great qualities he has he’s just not the guy you’re going to marry, and it’s like that feeling after he gives you your key and leaves. It’s like that space he used to fill in the room. The smell of him you can still smell in the air. The toothbrush that isn’t yours, which you won’t see until much later that night while getting ready for a bed that seems too large. It’s emotional overload. And emptiness. Physical, yes. But also mental. Because it’s your own damn fault he’s gone.
That I feel—based on just one short story—a sense of want based on not being able to read Unge’s three novels because they have not yet been translated to English, astounds me. This one story is that wonderful, and just as consistently surprising at every stylistic turn. “It was just, Yesterday” has stayed with me through the years, and this seems especially relevant because Unge’s author bio reveals that her “most devoted fans are younger audiences, whose problems she deals with in her works (particularly the confusing experiences of young girls growing up).” So it makes sense that I would be drawn to the content as well as her particular prose style. Here’s how “It was just, Yesterday” begins:
If I run at five to eight I’m just in time for the bus and sitting on the bus as usual is that Down’s kid and he’s the King of the Bus. He goes right to the last stop at the special school, so he sits there shouting all the time, he does it every morning when you get on and this morning too of course. [. . . ] He laughs and slaps his bus pass on his thigh, I sit on one of the seats in front of him and check my hair in my little mirror, there it is jet black on my head. It’s only one stop to where Thea gets on and she’d said fucking hell it looks really cool when I dyed it and black suited me she said and pulled her fingers through it Thea did. The bus pulls in by the church and Thea and her brother get on and Thea’s cropped her hair all over so her neck and throat you can’t take your eyes off them. Welcome onto the bus, shouts the King of the Bus and Thea’s done her lips purple.
Now that Thea’s on the bus, the narrator’s gaze never wanders from her, even as they converse, recall recent events, and fill each other in on their previous night’s adventures, which includes the subject of losing one’s virginity. When Thea asks if the boy was good-looking, the narrator can only think of Thea and how, “sometimes she laughs and wants us to kiss.” We learn that the narrator left her bottle of wine behind—the bottle of wine that was the reason for her meeting, talking to, and then going home with the boy in the first place—and when Thea asks why, the narrator tells us:
[I]t was hurting somewhere it was empty and some huge damn lonely thing was just swelling and swelling and I didn’t realize I didn’t know because I hadn’t said anything, I hadn’t pushed away his body I’d just lain there on the sofa and it had felt like my belly and crotch were bursting when he came in and Iron Maiden were screaming and my head was thumping against the arm of the sofa thump thump against the arm and I didn’t say anything I didn’t do anything but I was there with my head against the arm and Iron Maiden and the whisky in my head thump thump.
Although we have been entirely in the narrator’s head throughout the story, we don’t know what compelled her to have sex with the boy other than perhaps the same reasons all girls everywhere lose their virginity when they don’t think much of it and are drunk. On the other hand, we know that she pays attention to Thea: “The bus slams on the brakes for an elk or something, it’s obviously deer trotting across the road into the forest and Thea’s rolling fags, Thea’s painted her nails green and there’s a scent floating about in everything that’s hers, her clothes and room and hair, lovely and soft it’s there.” It is probably not a huge stretch to wonder if she was thinking about Thea throughout that ordeal, to wonder if she was imagining herself with Thea, or perhaps that she was in some way getting even with or hurting her because she was not, in fact, with Thea but with some nameless, forgettable boy.
It is this narrator’s particular psychology that makes Unge’s unwritten storylines so compelling, as they offer up so many possibilities for potential readings. It would be incredible, then, to see Mirja Unge’s writing on the larger scale and at work in her novels. If the scope of what she accomplishes in a single short story is this satisfying, one can only imagine what she can do with that broader canvas
- Molly Gaudry
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/molly-gaudry-on-mirja-unge/