The gravity of love : ode to my family / Sara Stridsberg ; translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stridsberg, Sara, 1972- author.

Contributor:

Bragan-Turner, Deborah, translator.

Standardized Title:

Beckomberga. English

Language:

English

Swedish

Subjects (All):

Alcoholics--Sweden--Fiction.

Alcoholics.

Mental health--Sweden--Fiction.

Mental health.

Sweden.

Genre:

Fiction.

Novels.

Physical Description:

286 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

London : MacLehose Press, 2016.

Language Note:

Translted from the Swedish.

Summary:

Jim - charming, captivating, much loved by his women friends - has attempted suicide several times. Over his period of incarceration at the Beckomberga hospital for the mentally unstable, he voices his determination to succeed. Someday soon, he tells his daughter - as he has earlier told his mother and his wife - he will swallow 60 tablets, help them down with a bottle of whisky, and swim impossibly far out into the Atlantic. Will he, really? This question plagues Jim's daughter, the narrator of this powerful novel, who is as addicted to the hospital as her father is to alcohol. Through her subtle observations, we understand the emotional needs of diehard alcoholics, the rational uxoricide and other seemingly normal inhabitants of a psychiatric unit in the process of shutting down, depriving them of the only place they have known as home.

Notes:

Originally published in the Swedish language as Beckomberga : ode till min familj by Alberet Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, in 2014.

ISBN:

9780857054760

0857054767

OCLC:

962007979

Publisher Number:

99977556078