Sometimes, when I read a book jacket blurb like the one on Gentlemen (“dazzling … a breathtaking performance”), I uncontrollably snort; which is to say that it’s seldom an author takes my breath with his performance. Seldom, but not never, and as it happens, Gentlemen accomplished the task. This is the book Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay wishes it were. Like that book, Gentlemen seems to have been born of the author’s deep-rooted need to fulfill his boyhood fantasy of adulthood by living vicariously through his own characters. But I enjoyed Gentlemen more than Kavalier & Clay because while both books are expansive and ambitious, only Gentlemen manages to be really funny. It even pokes fun at how seriously it takes itself as Östergren’s magnum opus. The book was first published in Sweden in 1981, and the Swedish pop culture references went right over my head, but the universal warmth and good nature of this book didn’t. My pithy, back-of-book jacket quote: “A Fanciful Piece of Nordic Fun!”
