Lars is a first-person narrator who almost never gets to speak for himself — he is primarily occupied with reporting W.’s alternating self-loathing and Lars-loathing, in a strange mix of free indirect discourse and direct quotation. The result is a strangely co-narrated novel, one that seems to grow directly out of the dysfunctional dynamic of the friendship, which — perhaps like the damp — takes on a life of its own beyond the control of either partner. Unexpectedly, however, the result of this claustrophobic framing is that the despair is always leavened by a certain hope or even sincerity.

Adam Kosko very interestingly reviews Dogma at An Und Fur Sich.