The Exception: A Novel
by Christian Jungersen
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 192)
Read in August, 2007
(The much longer full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
"Ignoring the small flash of doubt in yourself -- that is what evil is. Nobody thinks of himself as evil, but that deception is part of evil's nature. And you can't lie to yourself all the time. Once in awhile, there's that moment when you question if you are doing the right thing. And that's your only chance to choose what is good, to do the right thing. And the moment last...more
"Ignoring the small flash of doubt in yourself -- that is what evil is. Nobody thinks of himself as evil, but that deception is part of evil's nature. And you can't lie to yourself all the time. Once in awhile, there's that moment when you question if you are doing the right thing. And that's your only chance to choose what is good, to do the right thing. And the moment last...more
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Read in December, 2007
Note to author: Most women do not act like those really awful 13-year-olds you encountered in middle school. Get over it.
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I was assigned this book by my adviser for an independent study. All I had to do was read it - not write anything, and I was happy about that. However, now that I'm not required to do any more academic writing, and no one is really "listening," I feel compelled to put in my two cents. I know - ironic.
In short, I am NOT a fan of this book. The basi...more
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I was assigned this book by my adviser for an independent study. All I had to do was read it - not write anything, and I was happy about that. However, now that I'm not required to do any more academic writing, and no one is really "listening," I feel compelled to put in my two cents. I know - ironic.
In short, I am NOT a fan of this book. The basi...more
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Read in January, 2007
It took me awhile to get properly into this book, as I started out not thinking the writing was very good... too much telling, too little showing, but I guess that was because it was necessary to get the back story into place, because Christian Jungersen quickly stopped explaining so much and got on with the plot. Once I did get into the book, I couldn't put it down. The descriptions of the bullying is amazing. The book is split up into parts, and each part is told from the view point of one of ...more
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Read in December, 2007
This is a top-notch, meaty psychological thriller that takes you inside a small office dedicated to research into genocide. There, the five office workers simultaneously dig into the very nature of evil as they study the most inhumane acts ever perpetrated, while they quietly destroy each other's lives with office politics and interpersonal bullying. Buried not-so-deep beneath the surface of even the seemingly closest friendships and politest collegiality apparently lurks seething resentments th...more
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Read in March, 2008
Copenhagen, here I come! Crispbread, soft cheese, fruit, and yogurt for lunch with your co-workers on a snowy Danish day fighting genocide across the world? What a lovely picture, eh? Well throw in some split personalities, damaged egos, professional climbing, a Serb or two, and you got trouble!
This book was billed as a psychological thriller, but I am not sure that is a great fit description-wise. It was more about situational ethics, groupthink, and the varying perspectives multiple pe...more
This book was billed as a psychological thriller, but I am not sure that is a great fit description-wise. It was more about situational ethics, groupthink, and the varying perspectives multiple pe...more
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Read in September, 2007
Well, I was very excited to read The Exception, after seeing a review in the Times. But I was disappointed. It could have been a much better (and slimmer) novel had it just focused on the petty evils inflicted on officemates, but it was also a grand (and overblown) rumination on the nature of evil. It might have been good as one or the other. The pair was just bad. The writing was also very... Danish. I don't actually know Danish literature, but I'm trying to give the author the benefit of ...more
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Read in December, 2007
An interesting look at evil on both a large and small scale.
When four women who work for a non-profit that provides genocide education receive death threats, they go from suspecting a Serbian war criminal to themselves. Paranoia sets in and suddenly everyone is a suspect.
The best scenes are the ones where we see the women together in the office. These supposed friends treat each other with such petty acts of meanness and malice that the reader sees that you don't have to be a war crimi...more
When four women who work for a non-profit that provides genocide education receive death threats, they go from suspecting a Serbian war criminal to themselves. Paranoia sets in and suddenly everyone is a suspect.
The best scenes are the ones where we see the women together in the office. These supposed friends treat each other with such petty acts of meanness and malice that the reader sees that you don't have to be a war crimi...more
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Read in March, 2008
The setting is a human rights organization in Denmark. The thesis is that we all have the potential for great evil, even, or perhaps especially, those who work and fight for human rights and that doing the right thing is "the exception" rather than the norm. Two of the idealistic young women who work in the center receive emailed death threats, setting off a complex chain of suspicions, fears, and counter-suspicions among the female colleagues of the organization. The book's passion...more
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Couldn't put this book down. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the exploration of human cruelty, confusion, fear, perception, and relationships. My favorite aspect of the book was the exploration of conflict between a person's actions and their rational thoughts and intentions. However, I didn't find that the characters' emotions realistically coincided with their actions. Specifically, I didn't get a sense of the characters' fear when they were actually being hunted down, like...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone looking for a good psychological drama
Anytime I try to describe this, it comes off sounding boring or depressing. While it's not a light book, and I wouldn't describe it as a page-turner, either, it was gripping and I could easily read it for an hour or two at a time, only putting it down and turning off the light when my eyes started to hurt. It was, bizarrely, a perfect accompaniment to the library management class I'm taking - but please don't interpret that as meaning it's boring. The management class is dull, but not this b...more
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Read in January, 2008
The book is based on an original concept - four women work together at a non-profit for research on genocide and when two of them get threatening emails, they plus another woman alienate the fourth female co-worker to dangerous extremes, paralleling the behavior of people who go from ordinary lives into killers during genocidal regimes. My problem with the book was that the women's interactions didn't seem realistic. It might have been the translation into English, but while I was reading it I...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Martha, Kate and Ronan
Want to know where genocide starts? Try looking in your own community. Start with one part scarcity, two parts paranoia and three parts self absorption and you have the recipe for genocide over the ages with no ethnic group spared. This book breaks down the reasons why man isolates and then attacks those they deem "outsiders" and intersperses the changing voices of the narrators with real archives from the genocidal research center in Sweden. Sounds like a downer - but the story line ...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
aficionados of denmark, genocide
Being as it's very educational for a novel, this book depressed the fuck out of me, and my view of humanity still has not fully recovered from reading it. The best parts were the sections on actual genocide, and the actual story and characters took awhile to engage me, but they eventually did. It's interesting to learn about the calm, stoic Danish people and their way of life, which evidently involves Scandinavian furniture, a terrible job market, being stalked by Serbian war criminals, and quie...more
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Read in September, 2007
This was a good read all the way through: a Danish thriller. There's a lot of plot, in the end a little too much for my taste. The thing I was most impressed with was the way Jungersen depicted the ugly side of female relationships, the small things women do to hurt one another, the effectiveness of these gestures. The setting of the book's an office that studies genocide, and the author makes good use of this, including information about many genocides, some I'd heard of, others I hadn't. S...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommended to Jacquie by:
Roger Sutton, via the Horn Book Blog
This book had a great concept -- office politics among four women who research and disseminate information about genocide -- and the concept plays out beautifully. I like how the book gives lots of information in a theoretical way, such as articles written by the characters on "The Psychology of Evil," and there's lots of intrigue and action too. The author perfectly nailed just how nasty people can be to each other, and was never too blunt about making readers see the connections betw...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
bullies and the bullied
One of the fly-leaf reviews called it disqieting and another called it 'wincingly nasty'. I think it is more the former. It is a book full of unease and disease and weaves the universal and the philsophical through it's thriller-like plot. It's a bleak exploration of social behaviour, from work-place bullying and it's traumatic impact, to genocide, harking back to the theme of the banality of evil. It is an enthralling book in a most discomfiting sense. Ithourougly recommend it if you have the s...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in September, 2007
It was really hard to get into this book because I found the writing to be very uninteresting (which could partly be the translation). But the more I read, the more intrigued I became by the psychology of it. It picked up speed very gradually until suddenly I realized I was completely absorbed by it. The questions it brings up are fascinating and make it worth sticking with the more mundane sections.
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Read in October, 2007
I am not the biggest fan of suspense novels. But having recently visited copenhagen i thought it would be a little nostalgia trip. I was pleasantly surprised with this book. It is relentless in showing the lengths people will go to maintain their idea of right and wrong. that's minimizing the whole plot but I don't have the exeperience to talk much about genocide. all in all, I would recommend it.
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Read in January, 2008
This book was tragically depressing and rife with paranoid characters. You keep waiting to find out the "twist" and the why of the story, but once you figure it out, it's just depressing and the resolution is nothing new: we make up our issues and then project them on our world. I didn't love this book at all, although the information about genocide was well-researched and interesting. Bleh.
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Read in March, 2008
This book is for anyone who works in a do-gooding NGO. The author manages to hit the nail on the head that people who like to think they've got some special claim to the moral high ground are sometimes the first to abuse others' rights. Unrelatedly, the funniest passage for me was a sex scene that really gained something in the translation from the Danish.
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