The life of Camilla Läckberg (Fjällbacka, 48 years) looks like a novel by Camilla Läckberg. He has sold 33 million books. I know I will never catch up with Astrid Lindgren [la creadora de Pipi Calzaslargas] nor Stieg Larsson, but I see myself close to the 40 million sold by Henning Mankell. I’m so shamefully competitive…” confesses the author, who has just published La secta (Planeta). We’re on the outskirts of Stockholm, on a Baltic Sea shore with birch trees, a pier and 1,000 meters from a house that’s furnished ‘to suit both of us’. “Simon is all about glitter and novelty. I like the sober and the old. The really expensive ones would be afraid of being stolen. Simon, a wrestling champion, is her third husband and the father of her fourth daughter, five years old and 13 years her junior. “The first gave me the security I didn’t have as a kid. But when I decided to take a chance, he didn’t follow me. The second was my platonic love: cop, handsome…Now he writes black novels”.
What is certain is that we know another Sweden with more than 40 destructive sects and where children disappear every day.
Appearance is essential for the Swedes. We defended a neutral image in World War II, even though we let German tanks through to Norway. Many Swedes were Nazis. We don’t like clutter or admit this site. The international image is that of a democratic country, sporty, without criminals or drugs. I show the real Sweden: with far-right parties.
friends from Sweden.
They are a very dangerous part of our world. They appear in my novels in the same way as men hitting women. These are ordinary things, not extraordinary. I write about what annoys me.
This anger has developed. His first commissioner was unaware of his machismo.
The #MeToo movement allowed common problems not to be seen as anecdotes. Many men made fun of her: “You can’t even compliment them anymore.” Today we understood the fallacy that a woman is afraid of losing her job if she doesn’t sleep with her boss.
Does it bring you value to have millions of readers?
In 20 years I have not only grown as a writer but also as a mother. With four children, I feel compelled to analyze society’s problems. The older I get, the more I know. Scientology forces you to buy courses to advance. It’s a cult. I have to share what I find out.
The Nordic crime tradition anchors the stories in everyday life. For you, thinking about life means talking about problems?
There are two types of drama. The extraordinary – a murder most people never experience – and the ordinary, which we all experience. Getting divorced, losing your job, fighting with friends changes our lives. I write about it. I didn’t calculate, although… I don’t like being second.
“Motherhood Kills Couples.”
There is no justice in motherhood and therefore there is no justice in couples with children. Men seem to think that women have caring in their DNA and we have to do 90% of the work just because they don’t see them, don’t hear them, or don’t know how to take care of them. And you look at each other and say, “My God, I’ve become my mother!”.
Are they our mothers or is it our own claim?
Working away from home, our economic and intellectual independence, is a conquest. But it became a sentence because with the addition that we didn’t delete anything that was at home: neither cooking nor painting nails. The kind of man who is “selectively useless,” a NASA engineer who doesn’t know how to peel an apple or operate the dishwasher is no fun, he’s dangerous. Simon takes our daughter to school.
Camilla Läckberg.Samuel Sánchez
did you become the man
I like to drink coffee in my pajamas. But I do other things like cooking. I asked him if it was unfair and he said that since he knew I hated him he would be happy to do it.
He defends this possibility of romantic love “for life,” but he writes about couples that don’t work.
love interests me And love blindness, more. There are those who don’t love without dopamine. And of course it ends with the conquest. This is not love, this is seduction, a wonderful tricky game. We appreciate less the couple we have after watching a romantic movie. There is no sexual tension after a while. This fantasy is one of the obvious reasons for infidelity. But it’s dopamine. A working pair is a work of art. It needs further development. Someone can be the better half for a few years. The rest is work, not a gift. Life changes us and we have to react to it. I met my first husband when I was 20. I got divorced at 32. I was different, I wanted to live. He wanted to stay safe. In view of this, one either gives up and adapts to the other, or one separates.
Was it difficult to live with your success?
My ex-husbands are proud, but they acknowledge that it has impacted their lives. Simon, on the other hand, was already successful in wrestling when he met me. He had three gold medals as a karateka. At 27 he was confident enough to wade into my world with three boys aged 11, 9 and 5.
Do you write to analyze? Meet?
I have to breathe, eat, sleep and write. It’s not a choice.
Ever since she was little, she has been drawn to the dark.
I do not know why.
The childhood of its protagonists is key to the investigation of most murders. May I ask you to find out how this interest shows itself in your childhood?
I think it might have something to do with the fact that my father was a police officer in the 50’s before I was born. I counted cases.
It’s Freudian.
Rather Freudian, my second husband was a police officer.
Her father urged her to read. And he soon died.
When I was 19 and studying economics to please him, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. I think if I had told him I wanted to write, he would have supported me. But I wanted you to think that I would help you with your business. Sometimes we complicate our lives for misunderstood love. Nobody asks us so much sacrifice.
Define happiness. Protection? Vocation? Risk?
All. That’s the problem. I always grew up at home with my father and mother, was ill and retired early. You were strict. They argued. And I’d rather read in my room than go out. I became an expert in conflict avoidance.
Also in school?
She was top of her class. I skipped a class because I was bored, naturally a geek.
Camilla Läckberg, pictured at Villa Lumos, her home in Stockholm.Samuel Sánchez
His investigator, Erica, is a writer and lives with a police officer.
Yes, and with all its problems: the husband’s inability to take care of the child, the weight gain from fear of the strenuous work of being a mother… I’ve seen them. We have an expression in Swedish: “We dig where we are”. I am a lazy writer: what I write is always what I know. I think that makes my characters believable.
That’s why its author Erica Falck and her husband, a police officer, solve crimes in Fjällbacka, the town where he grew up.
Because I know the place. There were no kindergartens in Fjällbacka. Some women cared for children at home. We called them childminders. I asked my mother to take me to one. He wanted to be like the other kids.
Today his mother reads his books.
she is proud But they are the only books he reads. My father read three or four at a time. From Agatha Christie to Henry Miller. He taught me to read without prejudice.
He wrote 10 books before he dared to change his city’s setting for Stockholm.
I am not a world writer. I need to know something in depth before posting a novel there. But when I started writing with Henrik Fexeus we decided that Stockholm would be a different character. This is where I want to grow old with Simon.
Lucky the third time?
It’s a match. I was 27 years old when we met. And I’m 40. The first weekend we spent together, he started unloading the dishwasher…
None of your husbands had done it in Sweden?
I have taken responsibility for the house. And that is a path to the failure of coexistence. You say thank you because they are doing something. It takes generations to change something like that. We believe that the home should be welcoming and warm… We women need to change that. When I broke up, no man my age came near me. Instead, the boys did.
The eroticism of power?
I think my generation doesn’t know how to deal with someone powerful. Young people don’t see it as a threat, they think it will affect them. They don’t compete. That’s why men my age look for younger women when they’re getting divorced.
How you did it…
You must feel superior. Protect instead of talking face to face. I need an equal by my side. I met Simon when he liked wrestling. Then he joined a technology company.
Was it your trainer?
Until I decided having your husband as a coach wasn’t a good idea.
In Sweden, the Crown Princess did it.
Already. But I like eating, not working out. So we dropped the subject. And we started cooking together. Then we made a book.
Will powerful women repeat the stereotype of so many powerful: show no weaknesses or doubts?
Powerful women will change the face of power. In Rwanda, after the genocide, there are three women for every man. In Parliament it is 67%. They are convinced that women are less likely to use violence to solve problems.
In your novels, is it addictive to find out the killer, to see your protagonists accepting each other?
The characters are important for me. I want to know where they are from, what problems they had as children, how they got along with their mother or if their divorce was ugly. You haven’t really lived if you haven’t experienced pain. Whether you risk it or not, at some point you will feel pain: loss, anger, heartbreak… These feelings are the basis of my writing.
what is your pain
I would say I’ve always felt left out. I always feel more comfortable in my skin. But it cost me. I’m like a Chinese dog, the Shar Pei, with too much fur for his body. That’s why it has so many folds until it’s full. I filled the crust I made to protect myself. I’ve spent so much time feeling insecure, thinking that at any moment someone would expose me as a cheater, that… being able to say how you feel feels like freedom to me. In the 20 years that I have been writing I have not felt alone, although I needed to be. When I start a book, I go to the hotel for two weeks.
Have you learned to accept how successful you are? With therapy?
Of course, the success gave me security. I did little therapy. I read and watch a lot of documentaries about mental processes. But I’ve spent so much time talking to myself and questioning myself that I’m bored with the idea of going to a psychologist to talk more about myself. A troubled man needs help. A mother with problems is a bad mother… The perfect mother has done a lot of damage. Basically because they don’t exist. But the biggest criticism I’ve received on social media in the last 20 years has come from women for letting my kids fall asleep in their bed and not mine. Here you have to walk 40 times to hug them when they protest.
Why does your life matter on networks?
I say what doesn’t work for me. It’s my way of accepting that I’m not perfect. As a mother, I’m sure what’s best for my kids – which means treating them basically as people – and when I read so much fundamentalism – people will hug them 40 times a night – I need to take a more relaxed viewpoint View. In other areas like my weight – my physique is not comfortable territory for me – I don’t feel confident and speak out of doubt.
The author who sells the most, who dances the best…
i am competitive I joke that people who are happy with themselves don’t achieve anything. But passion moves me. I don’t count. I’ve never been in better shape than when I was on Dancing with the Stars. Impossible to wait, of course.
how far do you wanna go
I saw that I could achieve things that seemed impossible to me. It’s addicting. I don’t see the impossible, I see possibilities. To grow as a writer, I have to take risks.
Camilla Läckberg, pictured at Villa Lumos, her home in Stockholm.Samuel Sánchez
He also makes wine…
I was invited to Italy with a group of people with a lot of followers on Instagram. I tasted the wine. The winery owner was a fan of my novels. I loved the wine. I wanted to be part of that. I have invested. I’d rather give my name to a wine than a perfume.
Travel with a group influencers and not having a group of writers is a change.
Of course you learn a lot more.
He denounces that writers can be snobs.
Or rude or alcoholic. But… a drunk writer is digging her grave.
Are you afraid of losing male readers?
When I started, I thought I would be mostly read by women. It was a prejudice: I have many readers.
Children, harmful and innocent, play the leading role in his books.
When you have children, you discover that children are individuals, little people. Not all children are innocent, nor can they all be loved. People who say “I love children” arouse suspicion in me. They are not a homogeneous group, they are people.
What is the biggest risk you have taken as a person?
My first divorce. twelve years. Two children of three and five. And without a classic reason. He was a good man. But it wasn’t the life he wanted. I didn’t know if I would regret it. I didn’t know if I would love again. But I took a risk.
You wrote that loneliness is not empowering.
Unchosen solitude is destructive. And the chosen one, the opposite. I’ve talked about this a lot with my eldest son, who is also prone to loneliness. Knowing how to be alone is a conquest. Simon and I are doing very well because we are two loners who like to be together. A writer does not have to be married to a writer. And he doesn’t need me to spend the day at the gym. We have separate lives.
She is a loner who advocates collaboration. Its researchers work as a team. And he has two soap operas with Henrik Fexeus.
We met 15 years ago and we always talk about books because he writes popular science for the same publisher. Suddenly he started talking about a novel he wanted to write about a mentalist, a person who interprets non-verbal signs for divine thinking. I started suggesting things to him and we saw that we grew together.
Do we all carry a potential killer within us?
Definitive. What varies is the threshold. There are people who would kill for money; others out of revenge. Most of us, for none of this, but… what if someone threatens your kids?
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