The Exception
by Christian Jungersen
Published by Doubleday
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Reviewed by Andrea Sisco
The Exception by Christian Jungersen is the author’s second novel and first translated from the Danish by Anna Paterson. Its Danish title is Undtagelsen.
Four women, Iben, Malene, Anne-Lise and Camilla, work in a cramped office at the Danish Center for Genocide Information. Iben and Malene are researchers and each receives a threatening email from an anonymous sender. They believe the email author is one Mirko Zigic, an evil Serbian war criminal. Both women have had their names attached to articles about him and believe he plans to retaliate against them.
As time goes on, the women come to believe that their new librarian, Anne-Lise, is responsible for the emails and they retaliate in an ever-escalating war game of harassment that soon includes all the women. They begin to exhibit the very behavior that they research and analyze on a daily basis.
The women find themselves saying and doing things they could never have imagined themselves taking part in. There’s a late night office break-in to gather evidence, a middle-of-the night house burglary, an incident with blood, computer tampering, jealousy, accusations of mental illness, a major break in a long time friendship, and a death.
Jungersen tells his story from the perspective of each of the four women. Through the women we are able to intimately see what and why they feel as they do, how alliances shift, how they each respond to stress, how gang mentally works and is so successful in spawning atrocities like Germany, Bosnia, Africa, etc. To add subtle impact to Jungersen’s supposition of behavior, he intersperses reports on The Psychology of Evil.
The Exception is an ‘in your face’ look at the dark side of humanity. It puts forth the idea that given the right circumstances, everyone is capable of the viciousness of destroying others to protect themselves. Jengersen breaks down the psychology of behavior to a scale small enough that people can understand how genocide on a large scale can happen.
You’ll never look at your workplace, community or neighborhood the same. Good people can do bad things.
Armchair Interviews says: A chilling, must read.
Author’s Web site: http://www.ChristianJungersen.com