Lisa Ridzén’s debut, which has been a runaway success in her Swedish homeland and elsewhere, demonstrates how sometimes the simplest storytelling can be the most effective. This is a novel with no clever structural devices or burden of symbolism and a setting so limited geographically that the reader ends up knowing precisely where everything is.
It is narrated by Bo, a former timbermill worker who has reached the age when people worry about him, and has a network of carers calling in three times a day. One of Ridzén’s inspirations was the team journal kept by the carers looking after her dying grandfather; very movingly, bulletins from the journal of Bo’s carers punctuate his narrative, the alternative perspective like a chill breeze through a briefly opened door.
