Fiction-induced nostalgia is a primary concern in the Swedish author’s fifth book and her first to be translated into English. Each of this novel’s four chapters centers on a pivotal, lost relationship in the narrator’s life. The nonlinear structure of “The Details” means the narrator’s children flicker in the periphery as toddlers, then babies, then teenagers. She de-emphasizes her own parenthood as a way to recover some past part of herself that exists outside of being a mother, lover or friend. Books are so crucial to her inquiry because they cannot define the reader the way a child, husband or girlfriend does.

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Persons: Kira Josefsson, Paul Auster’s “, Johanna, Auster, “, ‘ I’ve, ’ ”, Niki, Birgitta Trotzig’s “, ” Locations: Swedish