Beckomberga

A haunting novel of a woman's lifelong witness to her father's illness, and Stockholm’s mythic mental hospital.

Jackie's father, Jim, lives at Beckomberga. She takes the bus to visit him, though sometimes he refuses to see her and so instead she gets to know his fellow inmates: Olof, a man who has been there since he was a teenager, some sixty-three years; Sabina, wildly unconventional and beloved by Jackie’s father and their doctor; and others. Beckomberga is Stockholm’s famous, infamous mental hospital. An enormous, once-elegant building, it sits beside the most beautiful park, slowly falling apart. The doctor sometimes takes the residents for a night out—champagne in the backseat of the car, parties in town; he says: One night beyond the confines of the hospital makes you human again.

Over the years, Jackie’s family also falls apart, as her mother, Lone, tries to escape the oppressive hold Jim’s illness has on her, as Jim himself tries to escape in any way possible. What follows is an extraordinarily beautiful, stirring portrait of a family and the ways in which our flaws, yearnings, and the unreachable parts of ourselves shape those we love. Jackie bears witness to it all across time, with wisdom and aching clarity—Jim’s sadness and absence, Lone’s attempts to cope and then flee, the loneliness and wonder of Beckomberga, her own capitulation and erasure in the face of what they need.

Sara Stridberg’s Beckomberga is a truly unforgettable novel by one of Sweden’s most admired writers.