It’s a real achievement to become a best-selling author in your late eighties, as Magnusson did with her 2020 book Döstädning: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, which is all about doing a gentler version of Marie Kondo in preparation for your own death, so as not to leave it all to your loved Read More
Category: Nat: Swedish author
You Will Never Be Found by Tove Alsterdal – #NordicFINDS23
Translated by Alice Menzies It’s fitting to end my Nordic reading for January with this Swedish crime novel – for it was published today! You Will Never be Found is the second in a series featuring Police Assistant Eira Sjödin. I very much enjoyed reading the first volume, We Know You Remember last year, set Read More
Review Catch-up: Ginsburg & Alsterdal
I’ve spent so long writing up a review for Shiny with a companion blog piece for this Thursday, I’m getting rather behind on my other reviews, so here’s a twofer of shorter reviews for you today, both from Faber & Faber Books. Unusually in my reading they show serendipity – both feature an older woman Read More
#NordicFINDS – Sweden Week – A new to me grumpy detective
The Mind’s Eye by Håkan Nesser Translated by Laurie Thompson As so often happens with crime series, The Mind’s Eye published in Swedish in 1993 – the first in Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren mystery series, wasn’t the first to be translated into English later in the late noughties. That was the second: Borkmann’s Point. Why Read More
#NordicFINDS – Sweden Week – a novel of letters and longing
Some Kind of Company by Nan Östman Translated by Julia Rivers We have to thank Aspal Press for finding this hidden gem of Swedish literature and making it available in English translation for the first time. Östman, who died in 2015, is a much loved Swedish children’s author, often writing about girls and horses, and Read More
#NordicFINDS – Sweden Week – A Workplace Drama
The Room by Jonas Karlsson Translated by Neil Smith There’s a well-worn office cliché: ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps!’ Something that definitely applies to the employees of the Authority in Jonas Karlsson’s engaging novel. What the Authority does is never specified, but the higher the floor you work Read More
#NordicFINDS – Sweden Week – My Gateway Book – a different take
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist & its movie adaptations Although a rather baggy novel at over 500 pages, Let the Right One In, translated by Ebba Segerberg, blew me away when I read it back in 2009. My full review from back then is here. At the novel’s heart is the Read More
A perplexing thriller and a new trope: ‘Nuclear Noir’
The Carrier by Mattias Berg Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding This thriller has a premise and a half to keep you reading. Imagine you’re on a state visit and the agent who is never more than a few feet from POTUS, the agent called Erasmus Levine carrying the briefcase with the nuclear launch Read More
Ronning and Stilton return
This post was republished into my blog’s timeline from my lost post archive. Third Voice by Cilla and Rolf Borjlind Translated by Hilary Parnfors I had the good fortune to give out copies of Spring Tide, of which Third Voice is the sequel, for World Book Night back in April. I enjoyed Spring Tide so Read More
A contemporary take on the myth of Athena
This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost posts archive. The Helios Disaster by Linda Boström Knausgård Translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles I am born of a father. I split his head. For an instant that is as long as life itself we face one another and look each other in Read More
Growing Old Disgracefully …
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharine Ingelman-Sundberg Translated by Rod Bradbury Let’s get it out of the way. If you enjoyed The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson as I did, (my review here), I’m certain that you will enjoy this novel. This Read More
Stieg Larsson meets Forrest Gump but way better …
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson Translated by Rod Bradbury You might think he could have made up his mind earlier, and been man enough to tell the others of his decision. But Allan Karlsson had never been given to pondering things too long.So the idea had Read More
Old reviews from 2011: The start of two dogged detective series…
Cop Hater by Ed McBain Ed McBain is the author who really created the police procedural novel, with his series of fifty-five 87th Precinct books written between 1956 and 2005. In the introduction to Cop Hater, he tells how he came up with the idea of a squadroom of police officers, all with different characters, whom together Read More
A chilling and contemporary twist on the vampire novel
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist Translated by Ebba Segerberg All the other vampire books I’ve read in my ‘Season of the Living Dead’ have been rather cosy or had a good sense of humour. But then they’ve been mostly aimed at teens and young adults.Then I came to a Nordic vampire Read More
What my Mum is reading
Being between books to review at the moment, I asked my 70-something Mum what she’s reading. She probably reads more books than I do, and every time I see her she borrows a bagful or two. She always returns them with sticky notes on telling me what she thought. She reads widely, and dare I Read More
One New Year a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love …
When the Snow Fell by Henning Mankell A coming of age novel set in a small lumber town in northern Sweden during the 1950s. Joel’s mother left when he was seven, so he’s grown up looking after himself and his father, who’s prone to the odd bender and never has any money. Joel has reached Read More
Opposites attract
Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti Translated by Sarah Death I’m doing well with my resolution to read more translated fiction – eight out of twenty books read so far this year. Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti is yet another brilliant Nordic novel from Sweden to be translated for us to read. Both heartwarming Read More
