"The first time I walked into the room I turned back almost at once."
From this skillfully subtle opening line, the titular room is spotlighted as the crux of a strange and surreal tale. Björn, the first-person narrator of Jonas Karlsson's The Room, is odd from the first, but we take him at his word: he is good at his bureaucratic job, perhaps not well-liked by his fellows, but effective and ambitious.
On the other hand, there is the room. Björn discovers it by accident while looking for the toilet. It is a lovely space, a perfectly appointed, perfectly proportioned, old-fashioned, classy office. He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and is struck by how good he looks, despite not usually feeling that he is attractive, or even worrying about such things. Björn begins visiting the room regularly, and a problem arises. His coworkers see him standing in a particular spot, along the hallway on the way to the toilets. They don't see the room; the room doesn't exist on architectural plans or for anyone else.
There are several levels to the uncomfortable probing Karlsson undertakes throughout Björn's odd tale, sketching larger doubts about the subjectivity of reality, social graces and the importance of control over different aspects of our lives. Karlsson's prose and the inventiveness of Björn's surreal mental workings are often funny, but the overall impact is also deeply thought-provoking and profoundly disquieting, and the combination of the banal and the absurd results in a striking and singular read. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia