Readers, please be warned that this book starts with a suicide and continues to be heavy and brutally raw for the remainder of the book. I struggled with this because the world is already horrifically brutal at the moment. I'm also finding myself fairly protective of what my mind consumers because my own mental health feels fragile at times.
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I found the jumping, non-chronological story telling frustrating rather than difficult to follow.
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This is the first translation I've read for a while but it was interesting to understand the world from another perspective in literature. Thank you, Deborah Bragan-Turner for the work you've done.

It’s not always easy to follow this powerful but very disjointed novel about mental health set in Sweden. The narrative is fragmented and shifts about in time and place, which I found had an alienating effect in spite of the harrowing subject matter. Its exploration of mental illness, suicide and alcoholism and the effect on both sufferer and those around him or her raised some very important and pertinent issues but I couldn’t engage with the characters and thus found the book interesting rather than absorbing. Much of the book is set in and around a Stockholm psychiatric hospital called Beckomberga, built in 1932 at a time when such institutions seemed in the best interest of those suffering from any sort of mental instability. Closed in 1995, it is to be debated whether what replaced these institutions is any more successful in helping people. Be that as it may, overall this is a readable and accessible account of people whose lives have been shattered and whilst it offers no solutions, it does at least open up the subject to a wide audience.