Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsMixed feelings
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 August 2020
I often love reading the work of Frederick Backman, first encountering his world in Grandmother sends her regards. The best thing about this book is the plot, which I think is quite a new venture for Backman but still manages to convey his usual messages and style. Kudos to that! The theme of mental illness and the consequences of that are also quite powerfully conveyed. However, despite some of the heart-rending and heart-warming moments and issues that really hit home for me, I have a couple of issues with this book. Firstly, the storylines and ultimate ending or endings are quite predictable, if you have read enough book by this author. It’s always about dysfunctional family, love and always always death and grief. I wish he would consider writing a book without any mention of death for once in the future, so it wouldn’t get so tedious over the time. Secondly, it gets so bogged down with all the political and ‘diversity’ statement to the point of being an overkill. Sure the author is most probably a fierce advocate for these people, but a story shouldn’t always be about what the author thinks, but how it might reflect the society and what other people actually think. Maybe for once he could leave immigration and stuff like that alone. Or maybe it’s just a Swedish thing, I don’t know. It just feels like everything he says, he is trying to make some sort of statement somehow, and regardless of my views on those issues, I find them to interfere too much with the story. Overall, I would still say that this book, like many of Backman’s books, is worth a read.
