Let's Hope for the Best

Reviews / Votes

This book! Swedish, confessional, shockingly honest about desire, love, loss. I've read it twice now and can't stop thinking about Carolina. Utterly compulsive -- Marian Keyes Brutally candid. The book's power lies in Setterwall's lacerating honesty. It's the most compelling book I've read in years * The Times * Quite simply one of the best bereavement memoirs I've read. It's impossible not to draw comparisons with Karl Ove Knausgaard, but there is a unique voice here, a style of disclosure all her own, incidentally beautifully translated. It's an emotional battering ram, I thought, and I absolutely loved it * Evening Standard * Every spare, controlled sentence has the ring of truth ... A painfully clear-sighted, unsentimental novel ... It's about grief in all its raw messiness, but it's also (as how could it not be?) about time ... Setterwall's refusal to impose twists or false neatness is at first admirable then, as a fragile new love begins to blossom for Carolina, gripping * Daily Mail * Highly autobiographical, Let's Hope for the Best explores life after sudden bereavement: the protagonist, also called Carolina, is left a widow with a young son when her partner dies in the night. The novel tells their love story, articulating Setterwall's huge grief and guilt, as well as her newfound caution towards love and intimacy * Evening Standard * Heart-wrenching and unsettling -- Rowan Coleman, internationally bestselling author A moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief * Kirkus Reviews * The kind of book that you'll never forget. It gets under your skin. It moves into the heart. The story is so vulnerable and direct that one cannot avoid caring for the people it is about, and to love them ... I have never read a book that, so beautifully, puts into words how difficult it is to live without - but also to live with - the one you love. One of the best, most touching and most relevant books I've ever read * Randiglensbo.dk * An electrifying read. A book that forces itself upon you, impossible to resist and difficult to pause * Dagens Nyheter (SE) * A rich, honest, and poignant portrayal of the many dimensions of grief * Alba.Nu * One of the best books I've ever read ... You're drawn into her raw grief, anger, guilt, bitterness, fear and loss - all of it, without any filter ... Real and alive * Sidses Bogreol * Breathtaking ... Astoundingly well told * NWT * A magnificent reading experience * Magasinet Liv * Honest and unvarnished ... Setterwall writes about the many nuances of grief, but also about love, family life and expectations of life before and after tragedy * Litteratursiden.dk *