Absolutely exquisite writing. Sara Stridsberg is special and so is this book. It enveloped me by the first chapter. I am enamored of the story..

The book is a young woman describing her death throughout the story. Each time she describes her death you learn a little bit more about her, and her experience being killed and her very short life. This is not a happy tale but wondrous in its honesty. Not everyone has a great life and not everyone gets good parents.

It was like Sara interviewed a deceased homicide victim. Just an incredibly good book that puts you in another realm.

I would like to extend my gratitude to the author, publisher and NetGalley for sending this advanced reader's copy in return for a fair and honest review.

I wanted to like this book as a lot of my fellow bookworms enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I did not. I felt that it could have finished earlier and dragged on a bit. There are a lot of issues raised in this book, not a lot of them good. Personally, I understand that it is good to highlight these issues in today’s society, but I just couldn’t like it.

5/5 stars

“They say you die three times. The first time for me was when my heart stopped beating beneath his hands by the lake, and the second was when what was left of me was lowered into the ground at the Solna Church. The third time will be the last time my name is spoken on earth. And so I’m waiting for it to happen.”

The Antarctica of Love is one of those pieces of literature where it took me a while to “recover” and distance myself from the experience before I sat down to write a review. Now, after a bit of contemplation time, I can say with even more confidence that this was brilliant. Dark, bleak, harrowing and therefore possibly not for everybody, but absolutely brilliant.

The story begins with the brutal murder of a young woman, viewed through her eyes as her life is snuffed out and her body is scattered throughout the landscape. Her mind remains in our world, and scatters in a way of its own, silently haunting the people and the world she’s been ripped away from. From a strangely tranquil kind of afterlife, she observes the ripples left behind by her violent and chaotic life, marked by addiction and trauma, but also by love and hope.

It’s a novel that is laced with contrasts, that emphasize the power of both extremes. The ominous sense of threat and menace that many authors associate with themes of death, is starkly present in the sections about Inni’s life. Conversely, her existence after death is strangely calm and resigned as an almost unbiased observer.
Contrast is also present in the writing itself, which is lyrical and poetic, creating a stark contrast to the bleak content of the novel. This is my first work by Sara Stridsberg, but I have to say that I’m in awe of the grasp of language and verbal imagery that both the author and the translator have put on display here. Translators don’t get enough credit, but Deborah Bragan-Turner shows about as much talent as the author herself by writing such a stunning translation. It’s what carried the novel for me, and hammered home the deep emotional impact it’s left on me.

Upon finishing, part of me wanted to return to the beginning and re-read the whole thing. To appreciate this level of skill again, and to see if there’s anything new I can glean from a second viewing. Another part of me wants to never experience the visceral disturbance this book brought to me ever again.
If you’re interested in picking up The Antarctica of Love I highly recommend you do so, as long as you’re aware it’s a disturbing and dark read. If you’re up for it: it’s a masterpiece in writing and delivers everything it sets out to do.
If you’re interested in the premise of a young woman narrating her life story after her life has been ended at the hands of someone else I’d also recommend 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. It’s a bit more of an accessible read that feels a little less dark, so it may be a good alternative if you’re hesitant to get into this one. I highly recommend both.

The Antarctica of Love is available from September 30th onwards in stores and online. It’s also available in the original Swedish under the title Kärlekens Antarktis.
Many thanks to the publisher Quercus Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The beauty of this book lies in the way it is written. It is a true masterpiece of exquisite language and storytelling that drew me into Inni's world and her thoughts and feelings in such a powerful way. I loved being inside her head and reliving her life in snippets, moving back and forth between her murder, her childhood, and her battle with addiction. It was beautifully told and the author's grasp of the English language and her use of words and phrases was stunning. I absolutely adored it and can't wait to read more from this author.

This book made me really question why I read fiction and what I hope to gain from it. There is real beauty in the writing style here, and that is always a good thing, but the story is unrelentingly dark and depressing and if you want to read for pleasure, you would find only a rather twisted kind of pleasure here. It’s a novel idea for a murdered woman to be telling her story from beyond the grave and the reader soon realises that the murdered woman’s life was filled with neglect and horror, and that her end was violent in the extreme. This reviewer doesn’t shy away from dark themes or graphic descriptions of murder, but this book went a bit too far for me.

3 stars (coming out Sep 30)

**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
#TheAntarcticaofLove #NetGalley

Pros
+ Swedish woman in translation
+ A murdered woman (drug-addicted sex worker) drifts above life, recounting glimpses of her life in non-linear form, from the moment of her death to her childhood to her life on the streets.
+ The writing is really beautiful--grisly and dark--but beautiful.
+ This explores the gritty side of Swedish life, including childhood neglect and placement in foster care, drug use, life on the streets, sex work, and rape/murder/dismemberment of a sex worker.
+ Stridsberg's character and setting descriptions are evocative and infused with melancholia

Neutral
/ You do not find out who her killer is. This doesn't bother me, but if you're a reader who needs to know who did it when reading murder-mystery-type books then this might not be for you.

Cons
- I grew to hate the main character. She doesn't make excuses for what she did, but her actions are so unforgivable (child endangerment, unrepentant drug use, doing drugs while pregnant, not caring about anything anymore, etc.) that I really didn't care about hearing about her life anymore towards the end.
- The book is about 100 pages too long, in my opinion. A LOT of content is repeated over and over again. At first, I was fine with it, but then it just got really annoying to read through the repetitions in order to get to new scenes.

TW: rape (graphic), strangulation (graphic), dismemberment (graphic), drug use, drug use while pregnant, a child being taken away by Swedish CPS, suicide attempt, drug overdose, sex work

Kristina is waiting to die, finally. She does not live anymore, she has been murdered and dismembered in the woods outside Stockholm, but she only really dies forever when her name will be spoken for the last time. So she floats in between the world and eternity, sees how her parents bury what has been found of her. She also visits her kids in their dreams, kids for whom she so hard wanted to be a good mother but unfortunately couldn’t be. Her life with Shane has always been a struggle and she somehow has always known that growing old wasn’t meant for her.

Sara Stridsberg’s novel is – despite the cruelty of the topic – wonderfully written and a poetic masterpiece. It opens with a description of what Kristina feels last, how she perceives nature during her last minutes when she is to become a part of the lake and the earth. It is also the story of a drug addict, a young woman who comes from a struggling family and does not find herself a place in the world and quickly relies on diverse substances to help her forget the darkness she finds outside and inside herself. It is a life lost, a life which could have become so much but didn’t.

It is heart-breaking to read the young woman’s account. How casually she tells the reader that at first, nobody misses her, neither her mother, nor her father who hasn’t seen her for years, nor her children. Yet, the later live a new life and her daughter might hardly remember her, too early in her life was she taken away and put into a foster family. Yet, this was the best Kristina could do for her, at least once in her life she did something right despite the feeling of loss.

When she was pregnant, she wanted to get clean, to be a good mother, to care for Valle and Solveig. However, the craving was always too strong, harshness of life always brought her back to the drugs. She feels ashamed for not having been able to care for the kids. But she has always lived in the darkness and the rare rays of light couldn’t lead her to another life.

A life not lived and yet, as humans, we are just a blink in eternity. In 2019, “The Antarctica of Love” was awarded Sveriges Radios Romanpris, a Swedish literary prize for the best novel of the year. It wasn’t the first time Stridsberg’s work was highly appreciated. She uses language in a unique way which does not only touch you profoundly but goes deep down into you and reaches you at your core having the novel make a deep impression that stings.

It's taken me a while to think about this book and what rating I should give it. Yes, it is extremely depressing, almost relentlessly so but it is also beautiful. Philosophical shades of Brockmeir's The Brief History of the Dead I did find myself utterly absorbed in this book. There were times when it almost reduced me to tears, it was so poignant. Synopsis can be read on the backs of books and plot summaries have no place in reviews suffice to say that this is a the story of a murdered woman looking back at her life, the events leading up to her murder and the aftermath.
The translator has done, I assume an excellent job. This is one of those times when you wish you could read the original. Heartbreaking is an over used word but very apt in this context. This book will stay with you if you let it in. Believe me, despite the doom and gloom it is a very pertinent and acutely observed reflection on human life, mental health, drugs and societal attitudes. How quick we are to judge those who don't fit our worldview on how women, especially should behave. My regret is that these words may not do the book justice

This was a heartbreaking story, that left me thinking for days. Without spoiling anything, the plot twists and character development was done so well!

This book is narrated by a woman who has been murdered. From her perspective, you see her memories of life, the moment of her death, and what she sees beyond it, all mixed together in vignettes that make it feel like she is living through all these moments at once. It’s brutal and tender at the same time, with stories of her children growing up in care interspersed between points in her murderer’s life and memories. The narrative style is totally unique and very whimsical while also remaining real and emotional.

I didn’t enjoy my reading experience of this book but I think that’s more my fault for reading it at the wrong time - it’s very dark and unrelentingly hopeless which I wasn’t in the mood for, so I was left feeling disconnected for a lot of the novel. But there were moments I really felt what the characters were going through, especially when it came to watching the narrator’s children grow up and find their own lives. The discussion of who gets left behind by society and how people are just left to be forgotten was very powerful but also became a bit repetitive. I’m not sure how I feel about this: it was a weird reading experience, but overall I think it is a well-written book with a risky but impressively executed narrative style.

The opening of this book is breathtaking and devastating! The writing is incredibly beautiful but the story itself is cold, dark and upsetting. The narrator is Inni, a young woman, a daughter, mother and heroin addict and she is dead. She tells the story of her life and brutal murder, and then watches her children and mother afterwards. It isn’t told in a linear way and very often it circles around to the same incidents particularly her death. I found it a powerful read, difficult to keep reading but also impossible to stop. I was drawn to the stark beauty of the cover and the intriguing title and then the words are so compelling, this book will probably haunt me for ages.

As Inni's body lies in pieces,in suitcases,and discarded,she takes us on the journey of her life.
Piecing together her neglected childhood,her fall into drug use and prostitution.
Then we go beyond her lifetime,as she catches up with those she had the most important relationships,her parents and children.

This is quite the unique book,definitely lime nothing I've ever read. The first few pages I found confusing,too many names that had no relevance to me at that time.
But that was short lived,and soon I was fully immersed in everyone's life,the lows and the highs.

It's a book that's going yo stay with me for a while.

I thought this book was well written / translated but was a bit too dark / intense for me. I found it difficult to read and wouldn’t rush back to read something similar.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

"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."

Beautifully written this novel is both harrowing and unflinching in its truth. A stunning book that is both insightful and intense..

At times the words are so brutal you struggle to stay in her world but those same words captivate you to find out more. The themes of vulnerability and loneliness are heart breaking.

The Antarctica of Love has been translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner from the 2018 original by Sara Stridsberg
This is a chilling work of literary fantasy where ‘Inni’ describes her own brutal death, we view her life before this and afterwards, for those left behind.
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.
Overall, this is an original, unique, enigmatic and thought provoking read. At times brutal, horrific and hard but by equal measure it’s intense, insightful and thoughtful. It’s not for everyone but I’m so glad I read it as it’s not a book to be forgotten.
The translation is exceptionally good allowing the storyline to flow. My only negative is that is a bit repetitive and so could probably have been shortened which could have achieved an even greater impact on the reader.
Thank you to Maclehose Press and Netgalley for an eARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Conflicted feelings with this one, it was disturbing but also of a style I’d never read before. If you're ready for a thought-provoking, big-feelings, artistic writing, disturbing, emotional, intense read - this one is for you! It’s definitely a book I won’t be forgetting for a long time. I’ll be looking out for this author in the future to see what she comes up with next!

This moving and though provoking novel, translated from the Swedish, is a far from ordinary exploration of crime. Through the thoughts of the initially unnamed victim of a pre-planned and vicious killing the reader is asked to explore both the nature and attraction of extreme violence to a stranger. This is not a pleasant read as a result – throughout the book there are increasingly detailed and very visceral descriptions of the “process” from meeting of killer and killed to disposal of the body parts (and the retention of trophies). But that will be balanced by the increasingly detailed picture that will be built of the dead woman, her parents, partner and children.
The first message is “that they say you die three times”. This forms the skeleton of the novel on which the telling hangs. The first time apparently is when you are actually killed, the second when you are buried (if indeed you are) and the third when all people stop talking about you. As Kristina passes through her last months of her life to her final third death and conscious oblivion she will recount what happened, how she reached the point in her life of the attack and then what she sees as she continues to seek out and watch over her partner and family members as her “life” moves through its final dimensions.
Her life was traumatised early. As she played as a child her younger brother drowned nearby. She will have to cope with the guilt of that, but of the impact of the grief of her mother and the fading of her parents’ marriage. She will be unsettled, leave home early and will find both a partner and the drugs that will give her oblivion from memories and pain. But she soon has a son Valle who brings her great joy, but her second pregnancy convinces her that she cannot manage to raise children safely. Her partner refuses to accept this decision and they separate. The immediate signing over and removal of her daughter, causes so much grief that her son will be removed too. With nothing to hold her life in a positive place she will return to drugs. Drugs are funded by prostitution and that brings her to the attention of her killer at a time when she is so distressed she is prepared to die.
But Kristin’s passing through the three stages is slow, just as death is not immediate. So Stridsberg brings yet another aspect to this tale. The killing takes place in an isolated wood, an older landscape. Time becomes the third character. Does and should time change one’s view of death (however violent)? Death is a part of the cycle of existence that has happened for aeons, humans are just part of the natural rhythm. With time, memory and grief will be gone. So will all traces of Kristina her family and her killer. So what is the true, global, importance of what has happened? Stridsberg manages in her detailed descriptions of short portions of what happened to stretch and almost vibrate time in an extraordinary way. She takes the reader to not just the place, but to the smells, the sounds and the deeper impact of being and the stretching of time.
This novel places crime and murder exactly where it should be, an assault on a real person, which carries trauma and impact for the people who were close to the victim. In can mean a lifetime of damage, grief and pain. But it means lost opportunities, unfulfilled wishes and happenings, other deeper closures before they have the opportunity to bloom and the change of life routes for others. It is not, and never should be, an issue of the murderer, even if they have used their life to play out a bizarre and destructive role. It was their choice and they might have found satisfaction in it. Yes, murderers exist but they have no more value and are no more deserving of attention than other people.
This is a strange and compelling novel. It deals with difficult issues in a sympathetic and questioning way. It will raise questions about making simple assumptions about others. Others often just seen in passing or reported through media. But it shows to the complexity of personal lives and how goodwill and intentions cannot always bring or retain the better things. Life is random; you have to live what is given.

Dark and disturbing, uncomfortable to read but intriguing. A very different look at a murder committed, without spoiling the story, I think it will make you reevaluate your life and choices.

There is a woman who gets killed at the very beginning of the story. What is surprosing is that she is the one who tells the story of her own death. In fact, she is telling this story over and over again as if trying to work it out and wait for some breakthrough. And indeed, she is waiting for some.

The story is told through a perspective of a young dead woman. Woman who got killed by a hunter (known to her), who decided to dismember her body. The narrator describes her death (or deaths to be precise), the course of action which proceeded it and all the relations and emotions that she misses and tries to work through. There is someting about motherhood, family relations, romantic relations and general widely understood consent of one's identity and searxh for sense in life.

The book is very fragmentary, quite chaotic and difficult to summarize. I believe its value lies in its oryginality, yet I had problems with indulging in it. The narrator seemed too distant, her actions too unjustified and the general plot too fantastical. It is quite poetic and the combination of violence and lyricism is definitely worth exploring. However, it is far from griping, therefore despite having not so many pages it drags a bit.

I am not a fan of this book, but I might recommend it to readers who like very sketchy, not plot wide, slow stories with women as central 1st person narrative characters.

As you can imagine from the title, The Antarctica of Love is an unrelentingly bleak novel. It's dark and brutal, and ticks off just about every trigger warning you can think of.

But it also has moments of real beauty. The translation is hauntingly poetic: it reads almost like an extended fever dream, suffused with grief, hope and bitter imagery. Stridsberg creates some intense, evolving characters - and I found it fascinating to follow the character development of a narrator who is already dead.

Stark and unique, The Antarctica of Love is an intelligent novel which makes for a bruising read.