What a Shame by Abigail Bergstrom
Abigail Bergstrom's new novel What a Shame is a warm, frank and introspective look at the aftermath of heartbreaking events
Misfortunes rarely arrive alone, as Mathilda, the protagonist of Abigail Bergstrom’s tender and wise What a Shame, knows too well. Reeling from the death of her father and the abrupt departure of her partner, her heartbreak is – try as she might – impossible to parse. There is a sense of life passing, and barely lived; of the paths laid out before us, both elusive and binding. And over everything, the spectre of female shame lingers.
Taking place over mere weeks, What a Shame has the assured focus of a novel concerned more with aftermaths than events. Mathilda’s introspective narration – startlingly funny and achingly perceptive – is broken only by frequent, unnerving shifts to the second-person, towards the unexorcised ghosts of her father and ex. It is not always clear which she is addressing but this is, certainly, the point: the penetrating spectre of male violence is just as omnipresent as that of female shame.
Bergstrom’s prose, and especially the core dynamic of Mathilde and her friends (a coven of voice notes and anxious love) has a sweet verisimilitude that is delightfully frank, (re)inscribing warmth and intimacy for warmth and intimacy’s sakes. And if it all seems a bit familiar – the millennial hodgepodge of tarot, bad dates, housemates and female trauma – well, maybe this is also the point. Maybe these stories are more common than we want to believe.