Sara Kadefors

"Ida är sexton och bor i Stockholm med sin mamma. Mamman är deprimerad och ligger mest i sängen med ansiktet mot väggen, skitigt hår och joggingbyxor. Ida tar ansvar och förlåter när mamma glömt att de inte har mat hemma. Mamman tar stor plats i Idas liv. En tillflyktsort är mejlen till pappa som har en ny familj och bor i USA. En annan är festerna då hon dricker och känner sig fri. Idas kompisar Susanna och Therese är sååå avundsjuka på Ida för Ida är snygg. Riktigt snygg. Så snygg att när vännerna sviker viskar man hora i korridorerna på skolan. Ida söker mening.

Sandor är sexton och bor utanför Göteborg. I radhus, kärnfamilj och gemensam helgfrukost. Sandor har just inga kompisar. Tobbe, men han är en tönt som bygger lådbilar. Men Sandor har dansen. Baletten är hans himmel och hans helvete, för man kan inte dansa utan att bli kallad bögjävel och klassbög av Babak, Valle och de andra på skolan. Sandors mamma är på honom hela tiden: dansen var hennes allt och nu är det han som ska förverkliga hennes framgångsdröm. Pappan däremot är frånvarande - instängd på sitt arbetsrum. Sandor söker mening."… (más)

Kyla is exactly the kind of girl Alex could never talk to in real life. She's a gorgeous, outspoken L.A. girl who parties to forget about her absent father and depressed mother. He's a shy ballet dancer from outside San Francisco who's never been kissed. Luckily, when these sixteen-year-olds meet for the first time it's not in real life - it's in a chat room, where they can share their feelings of isolation and frustration away from the conformity-obsessed high school scene. Alex and Kyla quickly forge a friendship that's far from virtual - maybe they're even falling in love. But what happens when the soul mate you've never met moves from online to in person?… (más)

Jonas lives a good life. Two kids, a successful painting business, married to the woman of his dreams, planning to finally buying a house. He’s the reliable sort, not comfortable in the spotlight, not a dinner speaker perhaps, but a beloved kids’ coach in both football and handball. But inside, Jonas is full of self hate, insecurities and feelings of inferiority. His white trash background, his dyslexia, his uninterested father form a hole inside him. And at the bottom of that hole is a nagging, black guilt that he’s never even begun to deal with. When Jonas wife decides to divorce him, he falls freely into an abyss of depression, anger and demons from the past.

In cross cut chapters we meet Jonas now, and in the childhood he never speaks of – when he was just another no good punk on the backyard of the welfare state, drinking, smoking weed, boffing, getting crappy grades and breaking into summer houses. And we get to know what really happened that summer night, many years ago, when Rebecka, the light in his life, died in a moped accident.

Kadefors has a keen eye for class especially. Like in her other books, this is a story of luggage, of falling out of the frame, of being unable to keep up. And Jonas’ inferiority visavi the other middle class people around him is as painful to read as it rings true. The same goes for his desperate, crude attempts at revenge. Unfortunately, Kadefors also has a tendency of writing stereotypes a lot of the time, and many secondary characters feel like flat clichés.

I listed to most of this during my long Fotrally, and as a book for such an occasion it worked well – substantial but not hard to follow, with a touch of simplification suitable for a tired head (It just so happens I listened to Kadefors during last year’s hike too!)… (más)