Let's Hope for the Best
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
'I think the world should read it' LISA TADDEO, AUTHOR OF THREE WOMEN
A Guardian Book of the Year
After the unexpected death of her partner, Carolina Setterwall found herself bereft and rudderless at thirty-six, faced with the seemingly impossible task of raising her son alone.
In this remarkable Swedish memoir about grief and guilt, memory and intimacy, she explores the nature of bereavement itself – the difficulty of learning to live with the ones we love, and the trials of living without them.
'The most compelling book I've read in years' The Times
'It's impossible not to draw comparisons with Karl Ove Knausgaard. I absolutely loved it' Evening Standard
'Every spare, controlled sentence has the ring of truth. Gripping' Daily Mail
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Setterwell's austere, quietly disturbing debut traces the years from 2009 to 2016 in the life of a narrator who shares the Swedish author's name. The novel's journal-like entries are directed to the narrator's partner, Aksel, who died suddenly in his early 30s of cardiac arrest while Carolina was sleeping on the floor of their infant son's room in their Stockholm apartment. The story at first follows two timelines, with one set of journal entries beginning just before Aksel's death and moving into the weeks that follow, and another beginning the day that Carolina and Aksel met and moving forward to eventually catch up with the first timeline. The second half of the novel follows Carolina for two more years as she struggles with grief and meets a potential new partner. The plot is driven not so much by suspense, of which there is little, as it is by an unwavering gaze at the minutiae of the narrator's often grim life. While her relationship with Aksel had a few moments of joy, it was in trouble before his death, and Carolina documents her sessions with a therapist as she attempts to make peace with her conflicts about staying at home with a demanding infant. While it's easy to admire Carolina's scrupulous self-analysis, her consistently melancholy disposition, however well justified, becomes a slog for the reader, and it's hard not to long for a few moments of humor or lightness. Nevertheless, this is a starkly unsentimental depiction of the difficulties of life after the death of a partner.
