Body double, a novel by Hanna Johansson

So intriguing! Johansson’s latest book is described as a ‘surreal thriller’; I would add an extra adjective, ‘surreal psychological thriller’.  It explores themes of surveillance, stalking, voyeurism, memory and dreams, and references neo-noir films such as Michael Haneke’s Cache or Hidden (2005), David Lynch’s mystery Mulholland Drive (2001), and of course, Brian de Palma’s erotic thriller Body Double (1984), all films with endings that are ‘open to interpretation’. Even the writing style often seems like the directions in a film script “I take the metro … I stamp my ticket … I stand in the clattering train, I listen to the chiming of the doors. I hold on to a leather strap.” The two protagonists, Naomi and Laura, even talk about the kind of film that interests them, films about ‘paranoid women’, "Women who live alone. Women who are stalked. Women who are driven mad. And women who are murdered". Reading this in the first chapter, the reader has intimations about the direction of the novel.

The first time the women meet is in a department store café, after Naomi discovers she has accidently taken someone else’s coat, a coat very similar to her own. When she goes back to return it, she is struck by Laura’s appearance: her vague look, her unnaturally pale eyes and brown lipsticked lips. But Naomi is drawn to her nonetheless and further coincidental meetings lead to Laura moving into Naomi’s place. Then Naomi goes to work each day while Laura waits for her at home.

Another strand of the novel is the first-person narration of a woman transcribing tapes for a ghostwriter: the recollections of various women wanting their lives to be recorded and made into books. She listens and records their every word, their silences, their tears, no matter how convoluted the accounts, everything is taken down, for the ghostwriter to craft into a ‘story of a life’. Snippets from the recordings are included in the text; they may be random memories or something more significant. The unnamed person is so absorbed in listening and transcribing that she feels like she is disappearing; she can’t remember her own life. The reader becomes aware that those transcribed records are important, little threads are picked up and woven into something else.

Johansson’s novel is such an intriguing and clever piece of work, building an atmosphere of discomfort and creepiness, exploring ideas of self, identity, doppelgangers, and body doubles. The threads come together in an increasingly disturbing way. The final unravelling, like the arthouse films it references, with its lingering last image, is ‘open to interpretation’.

Hanna Johansson has been awarded two prestigious literary distinctions in Sweden for Body Double:  the Albert Bonnier Scholarship 2025, and a Samfundet De Nio prize. We are fortunate that Scribe’s publication of Kira Josefsson’s translation now makes this strange and compelling thriller available to a wider audience.

Themes: Thriller, Doppelganger, Identity, Obsession, Stalking.

Helen Eddy