Lund is the Swedish setting of Marianne’s exchange year, a period in which outward independence coexists with emotional withdrawal and a damaging relationship with Lukas. The city’s cold, unfamiliar surroundings and the secluded routines of Lukas’s studio frame Marianne’s increasing detachment from other people, while memories of Connell and her estrangement from her former social circle remain active in her life there.

Setting and Arrival

Marianne travels through snow to Lukas’s studio, which is near the station. She has been in Sweden for several weeks, and the weather gives her journey a distinct physical setting: she walks with her hands in her pockets, reaches the building, and climbs the stairs after Lukas lets her in. His blonde hair and black clothing contrast with the winter landscape, while his studio is furnished with a mattress, tall windows, plants, atlases, and a bicycle wheel. The objects initially impressed Marianne, but learning that they had been arranged for a photographic shoot made the room’s aesthetic order seem artificial to her.

The city also marks a stage of separation from her earlier life. Marianne has decided not to return home for Christmas and imagines becoming entirely detached from her mother and brother. Her thoughts of home are not simply geographical: Carricklea’s streets, shops, church car park, and Connell’s family home come back to her as a vivid counterpoint to the emotionally sterile life she feels she is living in Sweden.

Lukas’s Studio and the “Game”

Lukas’s studio becomes the setting for an arrangement he calls “the game.” It has rules that restrict Marianne’s speech and eye contact during the encounter; the arrangement continues after sex until she is allowed to shower. Lukas also uses the time afterward to say hurtful things about her. Marianne experiences the promised gratification as brief and unsettling, followed by a profound depression and a diminished sense of ownership over her body. The account establishes the arrangement’s emotional consequences without presenting it as evidence that she welcomes the harm.

The studio’s artistic atmosphere does not make Lukas considerate. Marianne recognizes his sensitivity to aesthetic detail but doubts that it is matched by a sense of right and wrong. This contrast unsettles her and leads her to question the value of art when refinement can coexist with disregard for another person. During a photography session, Lukas directs her positioning and asks her to remove clothing; Marianne thinks of Connell’s earlier comparison of her to a deer. The studio thus joins artistic composition to a relationship in which Lukas controls the terms and Marianne is increasingly detached from what is happening around her.

Isolation and Social Fallout

Marianne’s experience in Lund is shaped by a sense of unreality. People can seem to her like paper shapes rather than fully real individuals, and moments of eye contact briefly return her to the awareness that she is visible to others. These interruptions bring fleeting desires—to eat, drink, speak Swedish, swim, or dance—but they soon fade. She fills a plastic water bottle each morning and often pours most of its contents away at night; in Lund, she says, she is rarely hungry.

Her isolation also follows a rupture with the college circle she had shared with Jamie and Peggy. After Marianne and Jamie break up, he tells people he is unhappy, and she senses that others turn away or stop talking when she enters a room. The loss of admiration and social standing initially unsettles her, but she finds that she can get used to it. Joanna remains a point of contact and explains that she was never close to those others and had taken Marianne’s side. Marianne, in turn, recognizes that she had been drawn into a social world whose apparent friendship depended on status and the lowering of other people.

Memory, Correspondence, and Meaning

Even in Sweden, Marianne’s connection with Connell persists through their correspondence. His description of a deer prompts her to think of herself in Lukas’s studio, where she has become thinner and sees a resemblance to the animal’s sleekness. The recollection provides a counterpoint to the studio’s imposed poses: Connell’s words are part of a continuing exchange in which Marianne is addressed with care, even as her immediate surroundings feel distant and controlled.

Christmas intensifies the distance between Lund and the life Marianne has left behind. She remembers the decorations and sounds of Carricklea and pictures the crowded warmth of Connell’s family home, where Connell has written that the holiday will not be the same without her. Against these memories, Lund is associated with a life she describes as sterile and without beauty. The contrast makes the city more than a backdrop: it holds a period of estrangement and diminished self-regard, while correspondence and memory preserve connections that her isolation has not erased.