Review by Booklist Review
When her domestic partner, Aksel, dies suddenly in his sleep soon after their son is born, Carolina comes undone. Written to the deceased in the second person, this literary debut burrows into the intricacies of love and the devastation, guilt, and paralysis of grief. Like in Tom Malmquist's In Every Moment We Are Still Alive (2018), another feverish work of Swedish autofiction about loss, time seems to collapse. In this book's first half, chapters after the tragedy are interspersed with those recounting the trajectory of Aksel and Carolina's relationship, rich with passion and then compromise. In the second half, Carolina falls in love with a new man, and, though desperate for a second chance at a full family, she struggles with reticence and doubt akin to that which Aksel felt in their relationship. Both of the book's halves are narrated in an intensely felt present. Tying them together is Ivan, Carolina and Aksel's son. Alongside grief, this book is about the profundity of maternal love and the desperate desire to protect, even and especially after tragedy.--Maggie Taft Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this debut from Stockholm-based writer Setterwall, a real-life relationship becomes the basis of a novel about anxiety, motherhood, and trauma.Carolina is an adventurous concert promoter who falls fast and hard for quiet Aksel, a freelancer. "I'm thirty, and my love life is a mess," she admits, detailing her failed relationships and attempts to address bad romantic patterns in therapy. An anxious but eager girlfriend, she pushes the two across milestone after milestone while circumspect Aksel agrees to be pushed. "If I just wait a few hours, you come back," she muses. "I'm starting to learn your patterns. I'm starting to figure out how to exist in your world." But things shift when the new couple moves into their suburban Stockholm apartment and Carolina admits to wanting a baby. Despite Aksel's hesitations, Carolina resolves to find a way to both have a child and keep Aksel in her life. "Our negotiations are not beautiful," she recalls. "Neither of us ever leaves the kitchen table feeling good." Then, when their son, Ivan, is only a few months old, Aksel dies suddenly in his sleep. To cope with her grief, Carolina chronicles their relationship, from the day they first met until their son turns 2 and romance finds her yet again. Addressed directly to Aksel, the twin narratives of excitement and grief depict Carolina's obsession with both being and having this particular partner. Like grief itself, the narrative is exhausting and exhaustive, as Carolina accumulates details to learn more about her need to control relationships in the face of real or manufactured chaos. Her sentences are spare and simple, and they reveal a portrait of anxiety and control, grief and abandonment, that lasts for many painful years. "How can I hold onto you when you're not here?" she asks. "How can I move on without the approval of the people in our life who matter the most to me? The equation seems unsolvable."An occasionally moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
