Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I could not connect enough with this book to complete it. I started reading it on 30/05/24 and here we are at 16/06/24 and I still have not reached the half-way point.

There are some beautiful passages of writing, however, I do feel that there are also some really clunky parts - especially the timeline. I found it very difficult to follow in parts, and in fact, today, this has made me give up overall. I just can't keep track of "when" is happening.

I would like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for my copy of this book. Maybe at some point in the future, I will return to it and finish it.

Unfortunately, couldnt make myself finish it. Just didnt sit well with me. Big thanks to publisher for giving me a chance to read and review it.

A twist on Lovely bones where the character is speak to us from her death, after childhood neglect.

It's a hard read but poingnot. The timeline at the start with all the characters was a bit confusing initially.

Crushing, bleak, and heart-breaking, a tale of love and loss told from a unique life-after-death perspective, with hauntingly beautiful writing. A must read.

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for this ARC

This book will break your heart be warned! Disturbing and bleak thus must be read. Very well translated

Oh this book broke my heart!

Deeply moving, dark & brimming with poignant writing, The Antarctica of Love is a crushing tale of love, loss & life after death.

We have the voice of Inni who is a young woman - a mother, daughter struggling with heroin addiction with a job as a sex worker. She is now giving an account of her life after her death & I loved the unique perspective this offers.

Some of the parts are heart-wrenchingly sad & I couldn't help but fall apart. I would definitely advice readers to pick this up with the right mindset & expectations, when you are ready to bear with the sheer grief & devastation this book entails.

Stridsberg's writing is hauntingly beautiful & I thoroughly savoured every bit of it.

Highly recommended to literary fiction lovers - this novel that takes us on a heart-breaking yet mind-blowing journey - full of hope & detailed observations of what it is to be human.

Thanks to NetGalley & Quercus books for this ARC in exchange of an honest review!

I really wanted to like this book but found it almost impossible. The idea was great but seemingly gratuitous violence and leaden writing did not endear it to me

Death! We are all afraid of it. Of what comes next, what will we feel, what will we see, or hear? To silence this fear, we have come up with many ‘positive’ outcomes of the end. Heaven or hell, rebirth, eternal souls, ghosts, and so many more depending on cultures and beliefs. But this will not prevent it from happening. So, we all wander around the planet looking for an aim.
The Antarctica of Love, written by Sara Stridsberg, tells the story of one dead life. As if starting from the end, the book shares both past and ‘future’ experiences of the narrator – a woman with a troubled past and not existing future. After having numerous unsuccessful tries to sober up, the narrator, whose name I will not share, not to prevent readers of beautiful surprises, turns her back to all she has for what she thought she once wanted.
Being discovered dead and in pieces in a suitcase – a death no one imagines and wants. After many mistakes and regrets falling back to the trap of drugs, the narrator ‘walks’ around the world hurt and alone. Experiencing events scarier than death – watching the lives of her loved ones. Now she sees their pains and smiles, the weaknesses and strengths, because “you get slightly better at listening when you are dead.” She then simply witnesses the lives of those she loved and lost, for example, her parents – Raksha and Ivan.
The novel touches on heart-breaking and painful life experiences as death, separation, suicide, and drug addiction. The themes of love in the novel are expressed by the late realisation of the narrator of what she had and what she could have accomplished instead of abandon. There are many representations of love presented - the love of a mother, of a lover, and of a child.
I was extremely fascinated by the book, with all the personalized thoughts and feelings of the narrator. I, personally, cannot say there is a negative side to this book. Everything is understandably and beautifully written and the sequence of events is not confusing (I am mentioning the sequence of written events, as many of them are memories). The characters are created in a smart and thoughtful way, and the author has managed to present, even by little, personal information for everyone surrounding the narrator’s life.
Emotional pain and regret are presented in a very descriptive and suitable way by the author, as the narrator is almost constantly expressing her pains, and, looking both at the past and the present, wishing about what life could have been.
If you are looking for a novel looking at the depth of meanings of feelings, loss, love and separation, this book is the right choice. It might be emotional, but it deserves attention and is definitely a good read. It is suitable for any audience who believes that such emotional content will not affect their everyday life, and the book will stick with them simply as one of those reads you take a long sigh after finishing, wiping a tear or two.
I thank the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for presenting me with the opportunity to read this book!

The Antarctica of Love is definitely one of my favorite readings of this year. With a beautiful cover and an enigmatic title I could't resist to request an ARC from NetGalley. Luckily I had the chance to read the latest work of Sara Stridsberg and I look forward to more of her writing.

The Antarctica of Love is the story of the death of Inni and how she sees our world ever since. We meet Inni, a woman who tells us her story in a narration that takes us in a journey through some of the most sad moments of her life but we also get to witness tender moments. The book is filled with a writting that depicts raw emotions of people around Inni, such as her grieving mother. She seemed so lost withou Inni, and then Ivan, Inni's father, comes to complete the picture and it gets really heartbreaking.

Stridsberg prose is poetic and reflective, it had been a while since a book stuck with me this hard. Almost haunting me. I knew Inni's death would be painful to read but the way the author writes it is such a slow experience. We know that Inni gets in a stranger's car. With the promise of getting her drugs, she is taken to a different location. This man then procedes to announce to Inni that she will die, that was just bone-chilling.
The author also includes a very hard reflection about motherhood. Raksha, Inni's mother, wonders where her daughter is, until she finds out the location of her remains. But also Inni is a mother herself but her life involving drugs kept her away from her children. Now in this sort of afterlife she gets to watch them grow, reunited and even in danger, just watching unable to do anything beyond observing.

Another great characteristic about this book is how well the author managed to make Inni not just a victim but a daughter, a mother, a lover, a woman. We don't know much about the killer and you can see why its her story that matters. Beyond the actions of a cruel man who took her life out in the woods. The Antarctica of Love is a capturing story that resonates with currents events of violence, so worth reading it.

Wow. Take a deep breath before reading this. It isn’t easy but it’s brilliant. And it’s hard and it’ll have you thinking about it for a long time. Swedish translation book. Very well translated.

Incredibly powerful and moving tale of drug addiction and its consequences, leading here to the brutal murder of a young woman, Inni, who narrates the story of her life from beyond the grave. We get to know her intimately, as she’s always honest and clear-sighted, but inherently unable to fight against what seems to be her inexorable destiny. Disturbing, haunting and heart-breaking.

'The Antarctica Of Love' goes beyond the living eyes and delves into the consciousness of Inni, a former mother, drug user and wife. telling her story on how she came to meet her death in a forest on a dark and fateful night.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this book due to a few other books that I had previously read about drug issues. I was deeply mistaken.

Sarah Stridsberg's opening chapter just blew me away. The writing is extremely descriptive throughout, and I really got a sense of knowing the surroundings, the characters, their emotions and the pain Inni endured in and after her lifetime.

'The Antarctica Of Love' is one of those reads that when you start, you soon find yourself intensely immersed.
It's dark, and it's edgy, and has all the right tools to keep you clinging to the edge of your seat, and I easily got annoyed when I had to put this book down. Each page left me wanting more, but also wanting to devour what I had just read.

If you're after an easy read, then this book is plainly not for you.

If you have a penchant for timeline changes, expertly crafted writing and a stomach for death, then grab yourself a copy.

The Antarctica of Love is an evocative, heartbreaking and searingly original novel and an unnamed woman's tale of her murder, her brief life, and the world that moves on after she left it. They say you die three times. The first time for me was when my heart stopped beating under his hands by the lake, and the second was when what was left of me was lowered into the ground in front of Ivan and Raksha at Solna Church. The third time will be the last occasion my name is spoken on earth. She was a neglected child, an unreliable mother, a sex worker, a drug user--like so many nameless victims of violent crime. But first she was a human being, a full, complicated person, and she insists that we know her fully as she tells her story from beyond the grave. We witness her short life, the harrowing murder that ended it, and her grief over the loved ones she has left behind. We see her parents struggle with guilt and loss. We watch her children grow up in adopted families and live imperfect lives. We feel her dreams, fears, and passions, even though we will never know her name. This is a heartrending existential drama by the acclaimed Swedish writer Sara Stridsberg.

The Antarctica of Love is an unflinching testament of a woman on the margins, a tale of family lost and found, and a report of a murder in the voice of the victim. This novel of life after death unfolds in brief vignettes, brimming with unexpected tenderness and hope. An award-winning author’s ferocious and poetic novel about the hatred of women deeply rooted in society, The Antarctica of Love is also a touching account of evil, loneliness, and maternal love. The story is told by Inni, a prostitute and drug addict whose life ends in a cruel way in a spruce by the lake. From the perspective of a dead woman, we look at a world where her children and parents and, of course, the murderer go on with their lives. As with Stridsberg in general, there is a real story behind this story, Sweden’s most famous chopping murder from 1984, where parts of the body of prostitute Catrine da Costa were found outside Stockholm. In its characteristic way, Stridsberg manages to elevate real, shocking events into an art that deals with big themes - this time female hatred, motherhood, and a chain of exclusion that has been going on for generations. Highly recommended.

‘Everyone weeps apart from me, but something inside me has frozen. It isn’t just the tears, it is something else. A disillusionment so deep, so penetrating, the freezing point of blood, the ultimate Antarctica of love.’
In the dark woods, somewhere in Sweden, a young woman is about to be murdered. A junkie, working on the streets to feed her habit, she has willingly got into a stranger’s car and been driven to the outskirts of town. She tries to escape, perhaps half-heartedly, but there’s an inevitability about what happens to her. She is dismembered by her killer and the pieces of her flesh packed into 2 suitcases. These are found but her head isn’t and neither is her murderer. He remains anonymous – has he killed before? Will he kill again? We don’t know.
As we share her final moments and then her afterlife, she describes how she ended up in this place with this man. We don’t discover her actual name until halfway through the book, but she is known as Inni to her family and her circle of dubious friends. The death of her younger brother, Eskil, who drowned in the river when she was meant to be looking after him has cast a long shadow over her life and her family. He haunts her dreams until the very end and she sees the effects of his death on their parents, Raksha and Ivan, as Raksha becomes addicted to pills. Inni begins to slide into drugs such as heroin and ends up sleeping on floors and in train stations. She feeds her habit by going on the streets and exists on the margins of society. But she meets Shane and they have a son called Valentino or Valle for short. But old habits die hard and she begins shooting up again despite Shane’s attempts to stop her and in fact she carries on during pregnancy. Inni falls deeper and deeper into a downward spiral until she gets into a car with a stranger…..she is frozen inside as the quotation above says and she is almost looking for death.
The book takes place over 25 years as Inni is murdered in the ‘80’s and events such as the Falkland War and Aids are mentioned. It’s told in flashback and the present day as she hovers, ghost like, over the people she knew. It switches between the horrific murder and her past life and also the present day. This can sometimes be hard to do convincingly and be confusing for the reader. But here it worked really well.
In many ways this is a bleak book but it is a convincing portrait of someone who felt dead to the world even before she was murdered. But there is also tenderness and kindness. It reminded me very much of ‘The Lovely Bones’ but a much, much darker version as Inni realises that life will go on without her and she is powerless to stop the ripples from her own death affecting her family and her children. In one of the most dramatic and poignant scenes she sees Valle’s life of isolation.
There are some beautiful descriptions of the woods, the trees, the nocturnal animals at the very beginning which contrast with the ugliness and horror of the scene being played out around them. The opening scenes is scary and yet also breathtaking as it shows a writer in full control of their plot. It is a literary fantasy and the translator has done a great job.
Not a book for everyone but an accomplished story from a master storyteller.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

There are already quite a few novels on this site where the narrator is dead but this may be the most poignant. Our dead narrator is Kristine. A Swedish woman who really has not had a good life. When we first meet her, she is on her way to her death with the man who is going to murder her. She knows that he is going to kill her and she is not too concerned about it. I think I know what you want,” he had said. “I think I can give it to you.” He was talking about death, but I didn’t realise at the time. However, as she states this was a world I didn’t want to live in anyway and I longed for the sound of the coffin lid closing above me, for everything finally silenced. No birds, no sky, no light, no escape.

She had been born to Raksha and Ivan who were not particularly good parents and, by the time of her death, long since separated, though not formally divorced. They both drank heavily and, in later life, Raksha will spend her time popping pills. As well as Kristine, they had a son, Eskil. Eskil looked to Kristine, rather than his drunken parents for help and comfort. One day, the two went swimming. Kristine could swim well and dived down to look for beaver lodges, keeping an eye on Eksil when she resurfaced. On one occasion, he had disappeared. She searched in vain. She ran to her parents and, eventually, the body of Eksil was found. He was rushed to hospital but it was too late.

Her parents eventually separated and, after the age of fifteen, Kristine did not see Ivan again. She was often unhappy but, while still at school found solace with a friend, Nanna, who supplied her with heroin. There is somewhere else, an outside, with more room, or a truer place, a paradise that can rise up inside me at any moment, and it is the place I have been looking for all this time is how she describes her heroin fix.

She has her own relationship problems. She meets Shane and they have a son, Valle (short for Valentino). They decide to get married. She is pregnant at the time. By the time Solveig is born, the marriage is on the rocks. She puts Solveig up for adoption, knowing that she can never see her again. Eventually, Valle is taken away from her and fostered out to various people.

We learn all of the sad details of her life after her death as she gradually tells us them, including, in some detail, her murder and what the murderer did with her body. However, what makes this book interesting is what happens after her death. She says you die three times. In her case it was when he was murdered and then when her remains were buried. The third time will be the last time my name is spoken on earth. And so I am waiting for it to happen.

However, till the last time her name is spoken, she is still alive in spirit if not in the flesh. Two things happen as a result. The first is that she examines what happened in her life. Some of it I have already mentioned. In other cases she examines her own behaviour but also that of other close to her. Sometimes she is critical, particularly of herself, sometimes less so. She was critical of her parents – the only worthwhile thing they did for her, she says, was giving her a baby brother. She is critical but only mildly of her drug habit. It did help her escape a world she could not really cope with. And, as for Shane, neither of us was particularly good at anything.

However the other feature of her post-mortem life is that she can see what is going on with the people she knows. This includes, of course her children and her parents but it also includes the murderer. She wonders if her children think of her and how they are managing to cope with life and follows them over a period of years. And this is what hell is, watching your children live on without you. She also follows both her parents and their struggles. The murderer deliberately leaves clues and as his wife says, he becomes an empty shell.

No-one in this book has a happy life, often through poor choices but also because of incompetent parents. Kristine is a drug addict, a prostitute and irresponsible but still a loving if inadequate sister and mother. Having two drunkards as parents clearly was a key feature and partially explains why she gave up her daughter for adoption, so that she would have a better chance in life.

Her harrowing tale of her afterlife, from the description of the murder and what the murderer subsequently did to her remote viewing of what her family did are superbly told by Stridsberg and while we may feel that Kristine was far from perfect (at least we did our best comments Shane to which she responds In that case, Shane, our best was lousy) we very much feel for her as a person and her sad ending.

This book was heartrending, dark, bleak and it was disturbing but I LOVED it. The writing was just beautiful and very moving. Inni was a heroin addict but there was much more to her. Inni tells the reader her story, jumping between her childhood, adulthood, and the present when she is dead and watching over her parents and children, and she returns to her murder throughout, each time with more detail, some pretty horrible. I can't do this book enough justice, but one of my favourites of the year so far. Stunning.

I found this took some time to get into as its rhythm is quite unique. However, it is worth persevering. It reminded me in conceptual terms of Lucky Bones. A drug addict in Stockholm is brutally murdered and the body disposed of. This story is told by her, the victim as she describes her own death and the events throughout her life that led up to it. It also looks at the lives of her family after her death. It is a very moving, emotional read. Light and dark.

When I started reading this book, I expected a story about a toxic relationship set in Sweden. What I got was an unexpected, sometimes disturbing story of a young person who fell through the helping mechanisms of Sweden's social security.

To make it short: I really liked it. The point of view is similar to "The Lovely Bones", but it is also a lot darker and got really under my skin. Even though this book has less than 300 pages, it has some dragging parts, but on the other hand there are parts where I had constant goosebumps and tears in my eyes. The strongest moments are probably the ones with the children involved.
The reason why I am not super enthusiastic is probably because I got kind of lost in the beginning. I lost track of the people involved and the jumps in the story's timeline confused me sometimes. I will definitely look out for other books by Stridsberg, maybe I'll give this book a second chance once I am in the right headspace for it.

The Antarctica of Love is a hopeless lullaby, like a litany, a prayer that comes too late. At first, its repetitive character is rather unsettling. But soon the words and sentences fall into a rhythm and one can see a pregnant pattern in this cyclical construction. The lyricism of Deborah Bragan-Turner's translation is astounding. It is a very dark novel, there is no denying it: a tale of grief, of addiction, of failed motherhood, of loneliness, of violence, of death. But there is also love and beauty in it, like flickers of light through the darkness. I have just finished it, but I know already that this book will stay with me for a long, long time.

Sara Stridesberg delivers a sad and poignant story about Inni. She is a tormented soul, living a life equally tormented by neglect in her childhood years, chaotic teenage years and dark choices as an adult and mother that lead her astray and to her demise. Inni is murdered. It is no secret. But how her life ceases to be in that moment is what carries through this book. The book trawls through Inni's life, the lives of her children, Valli and Solveig, her parents, and all those that remain as her life ends.

There is so much brutality and starkness round Inni, and even though she is around people (even the worst people) she is still alone, lonely and isolated. Inni in her death is lost in a void, and she 'roams' the earth following those who are left behind. These people help to tell her story. As much as there is a disgust and dirtiness to the life of Inni, and her death, there is still tenderness and warmth. Inni's life was nowhere near perfect, and her death was violent and unforgiving; its recount is grim and graphic. We are not privy to who the murderer is. Yet they are methodical and planned in their actions. Almost polar opposite to Inni and her carelessness, neglect of her own children and love for getting high.

"The Antarctica of Love" is released on 30 September. Thanks @netgalley for the e-ARC..