The Invoice

Karlsson, Jonas. The Invoice. New York: Hogarth. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

It was such an incredible amount, 5,700,000 kronor [$625,000].

Impossible to take seriously. I assumed it must be one of those fake invoices, the sort you hear about on television and in the papers. Unscrupulous companies trying to defraud people, often the elderly, out of their money.

Description:

If James Thurber and Franz Kafka wrote a book together, the result might be Jonas Karlsson's quietly funny  The Invoice. The set-up is an ordinary man opens his mail one morning to discover a bill for $625,000 from a company only know as W.M.D ("World Resources Distribution," he later discovers). No listing of services or products to explain this invoice. Naturally, our hero tosses it away....only to receive a follow-up invoice that now had added a $160 late fee.

When he tries to phone the company, he is on hold for hours until he reaches Maud, a weary service representative. She explains that the fees (which he should have known about as they have been publicized for months) are for enjoying the many pleasures of life:

"You can feel something, can't you?" the woman continued. "You're feeling feelings, thinking of different things, friends and acquaintances. And I presume you have dreams....Do you imagine all that is free?"

He is just a simple man who works part time at a video rental store, enjoys watching movies, and living alone in his tiny flat. To be billed for what he sees, tastes, feels, and likes seems somehow reasonable to him, but the amount must be an error. 

Every so often a gust of cooler air would push its way into the warm kitchen, caressing my face and arms....Life was just so good, somehow. It was perfectly natural that it should be expensive.

W.M.D and Maud are firm. He cannot default and cannot run away. And after each conversation or meeting with the mysterious W.M.D and re-examination of his files, they do find errors in his invoice ... errors which require they increase the amount he owes.

A common Walter Mitty-ish man facing the coldly calculating, logical, impersonal machine of business provides a world of wackiness mixed with determined logic. The Invoice is a wonderful black comedy of a heroic everyman who doggedly pursues every avenue to avoid his rightful bill or at least reduce it significantly.  

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for it's peculiar charm, dogged characters, and delightfully implausible scenario.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jonasson, Jonas. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

The escapades of a man who escapes his 100th birthday party in his rest home and stuymbles onto adventures, including finding a suitcase of money, gangsters, an elephant, and a hot dog vendor. Delightfully funny.. (previously reviewed here)