I could not get into this. It was depressing and I felt bad for the three brothers but everyone was kind of bad and exhausting.

Three brothers come together when their mother dies to pack up her belongings and memorialize her. We slowly we learn the complicated story of this family, how the boys competed for their parents love, how the death of their sister died permanently altered each member of the family, I didn’t like the boys very much, perhaps I wasn’t supposed to, which made it difficult to be invested in reading and caring what happened to them, I suggest you check it out for yourself.

**I received an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review of this book.

This one just didn't work for me, I couldn't get into it and ended up putting it down within a few chapters and not coming back to it.

The writing was not at al my style, and the plot was slowwwwwww. Not much going on, and the writing wasn’t good enough to make me want to keep reading

Absolutely loved this book - the writing was quiet, reflective, and yet there was an underlying mystery throughout. Book is ordered and will be recommended.

Perhaps I should have stopped after I read this was in the vein of Atonement. I wasn’t a fan of that movie and that should have been my sign that this might not be the book for me.

Listed as a thriller, I was expecting something very different than what I read. Yes, there was a mystery and yes there was a big reveal, but more importantly, this is a slow-burn of a story that is dark, depressing and will require patience.

Not sure why so many books I’ve been reading lately have alcoholic parents as part of the character’s history but I need to take a break from that for a little while.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters but I think (I’m not sure though) the author’s intention is that you connect with the story and not necessarily the characters.

This is definitely a book to read when you are looking for something that shows the dark and dreary of human nature and family relationships. If Atonement is something you enjoyed, then definitely pick this one up!

Thank you to #Doubleday and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Books like The Survivors need to have a heavy reliance on their characters in order to keep pace, and they didn't really work for me! I wanted more of an exploration of each one, and that never was delved deep into. But, the writing is engaging and the tone was very well set.

This is a wonderful book that dives into the human pysche. Three brothers whose story brought me to tears. Three brothers whose life has been anything but easy. The story is also anything but easy to read, but it is beautifully written.
An accident brings these brothers together and we learn through each of theirs eyes how they few their family and each other.

It is a book that really looks at family dynamics and the bond that brings them together and can also tear them apart.

I was so excited to read this book. It sounded fascinating and engaging. However, after reading it, I have conflicted feelings about it. I enjoyed the story and the characters captured my heart. The writing at times was genuine and raw. Yet other times, it felt bogged down by trying to force an emotion or manipulate a feeling from a certain scene. I almost quit reading it several times, but I was invested in the characters and wanted to know the outcome. I'm glad I did because the ending was powerful and satisfying. I will recommend it to my patrons, but I can't say I loved it.

This is definitely a can't put down read. An amazing story. Emotional, strong, page Turner.
Recommended!

'It's a madhouse!'

A well-written novel about three brothers who had a screwed up childhood with neglectful, alcoholic parents. It's strangely told backwards on the day they reunite to scatter their mother's ashes, using flashbacks to their childhood. With the twist at the end, that technique makes sense. This won't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's something very compelling about Schulman's writing. The reader gets to know each of these people well, even though the story is told from only one brother's pov.

I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks for the opportunity.

I usually love Scandinavian literature but this one just didn't do it for me. To begin with (nothing to do with the quality of the book or its writing) it was hard for me to read because it wasn't available for Kindle which is my preferred method of reading. I managed to slog through it, though, and it wasn't easy.

I was looking forward to reading this because Frederik Backman, one of my favorite authors, recommended it. Unfortunately, this is nothing like Backman's books.

This is a slow-moving book with reverse storylines that are somewhat hard to follow. The characters aren't likeable, the parents were awful. The story itself is depressing and the whole book just seems gloomy.

Well. This wasn't what I expected!
When I requested this book, I totally thought I was requesting The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. Instead of a story about a criminal enterprise and a woman missing at sea by a Canadian author, I got a story of childhood trauma and three brothers by a Swedish author. Okay at least compare the two covers so you can see I'm not totally crazy!!

When I realized The Survivors only had two reviews on Goodreads, I thought maybe I'd found a diamond in the rough (cue the scary cave guy from Aladdin), and I was right!

The Survivors has a very interesting writing style. The "present" chapters are working backwards in time over the course of a few hours. I was so intrigued that this somehow wasn't spoiling anything! The past chapters are random snippets from the brothers during childhood. 

This book is raw. It's that kind of intense childhood trauma where you don't realize it's trauma until you look back on it as an adult. Benjamin, Nils and Pierre were all so different and their childhood memories affected them very differently. You realize they SURVIVED through it all. 

There's one painful reveal in the very end that absolutely astonished me. I never saw it coming and can't describe the anguish it made me feel. 

Overall, this was a deeply moving story about life through the eyes of a child and the beauty in brokenness. Children are resilient and find amazing ways to overcome current circumstances.

This is a book that requires a bit of dedication from its readers. It is a slow difficult start as the format of the book, two timelines with one working backwards, is a bit jarring. I thought I was missing something. Then I thought the writing was missing something. Finally I realized it was intended that way and the flow of the story started making sense. Three brothers are dealing with the death of their mother as well as events from a summer of their childhood. The story is told through the eyes of Benjamin. He is the middle child and very much the one who works to keep the family together and functioning. So when he is throw off kilter, the entire family is disrupted. Ultimately, I really enjoyed the story and was surprised at the conclusion. I'll admit, I had really expected something quite different.

First published in Sweden in 2020; published in translation by Doubleday on October 5, 2021

Three sons and two dysfunctional parents are the only significant characters in The Survivors. The sons reunite for their mother’s funeral, their father having died years earlier. The funeral requires a change of plan when the kids discover a note that their mother left behind. The reader does not learn the content of the note until the novel’s end, as it reveals a fact that Alex Schulman keeps secret until the novel’s late stages. The secret changes the reader’s understanding of the events that precede its revelation.

Much of the story consists of memories of unpleasant childhoods, scattered across the story that takes place in the present. The memories are “spread out like Lego bricks” for a therapist (and the reader) to examine. Transitions between time frames are not always clear. The story is sometimes disorienting, an effect that I assume Schulman intended.

The parents were educated and had refined sensibilities, but they lived in poverty. They gave their kids “an upper-class upbringing that somehow occurred below the poverty line.” The children’s “academic upbringing had been undertaken halfheartedly; it began with great to-do but was never completed.” At some point, the parents lost energy and their parenting project ground to a halt.

Mom was usually sullen but sometimes erupted in emotional outbursts. The kids found making Mom happy to be a hit-or-miss task at which they usually missed, although she did little to encourage their efforts. She seemed to have more affection for the dog than for her boys, although even the dog earned inconsistent attention. Dad had an anger management problem, compounded by a drinking problem that he shared with Mom. Dad spent time with the kids only when he felt a need to alleviate his loneliness.

The brothers are Nils, Benjamin, and Pierre. “Benjamin was always trying to get closer to his parents; Nils wanted to get away.” Nils, who had “special standing” with his parents because he was a good student, feels he was abused by his two brothers. Pierre feels he was abused by his parents and blames his brothers for not protecting him. Even before an electric shock induced visual disturbances, Benjamin had moments when he disassociated from reality.

The parents once encouraged the three bothers to have a swimming contest, then went inside for a nap, apparently unconcerned whether the kids were capable of swimming to a distant buoy. Nor were the parents particularly attentive when Benjamin nearly electrocuted himself at an abandoned power station. That event is significant not just to Benjamin, but to the plot that eventually unfolds. Benjamin felt “a deep love for his father in spite of everything,” but Benjamin lived in his own world. His memories, like his perceptions of the present, might not be reliable.

For much of the novel, the story feels true to its Swedish origins. Gloom overwhelms the characters and threatens to infect the reader. The therapist is a familiar fixture in Scandinavian literature. We only catch a late glimpse of a therapy session, but it is the breakthrough session that reveals the hidden truth, a truth that has been distorted by memory. The truth is known to the therapist, who wastes no time dropping it in Benjamin’s lap. Her hurry to get to the point comes as a relief, as the time the reader spends with this dysfunctional family is far from joyful.

Still, the lives of the depressive characters have some interesting moments and the story is nicely detailed. The woods, the lake, the power station, the cabin — all are easy to visualize, as are the sullen characters. The story is at times maddeningly ambiguous, and it is only at the end that the reader realizes how those ambiguities serve the story. My reaction to the big reveal was more “huh” than “wow,” but I admired the skill with which the story is constructed.

RECOMMENDED

Good book hat kept my attention. Well written. However, I did find that many of the stories/memories were repetitive and really didn't tie the whole story together. It is when you get to the final chapter that what really happened to the characters is revealed.

A good book about loss, grief and family.

The descriptions of nature in this book were absolutely beautiful. Set at a cabin in the woods, I love the imagery of reading in a chair by the lake with the sun setting through the trees.

But that's pretty much the only thing about this book that worked for me. I DNF'd at 25%. I love a plot driven story and this one didn't really seem to gain traction yet because of the alternating timelines, one of which is going backwards.

This book has some really positive reviews so I guess just missed the memo on this one but I'm sure it will be a great match for other readers.

I am grateful to have been offered the opportunity to review thus early copy. I wish this would have been available to read on Kindle as opposed to being limited limited the netgalley shelf- though this did not factor into my rating.

The Survivors is a sad and tragic story about a family being haunted by trauma and grief. The plot alternates between the present, where three brothers arrive at a lakeside cottage after their mother's death, and the past, where we follow the brothers as children who are spending their summers in the cottage with their parents. The story set in the present timeline is told backwards, so we understand what exactly led them to return to the lake only at the very end of the book. The brothers are haunted by a mysterious event that happened to them when they were kids and we can see the way it reverberates through their lives.

The Survivors is a heavy book, I had to take breaks when reading it because the contents are depressing and very challenging. The plot twist is bold but I was already familiar with this exact reveal so it didn't shock me the way it was supposed to. However, it definitely requires a huge trigger warning. The Survivors is more of a literary mystery than thriller so the pace was quite slow, and the jumping between past and present slowed it down even more. I'm usually not a huge fan of extremely slow pacing in the novels I read, but here it was a perfect choice, as it added more mystery and created a sleepy, unsettling atmosphere. I didn't find the characters very likable but I loved the prose. While I could tell that this was a translation (some phrases sounded a little off), the writing was beautiful and profoundly sad. I think this book will be loved by people familiar with this very specific style of Scandinavian literature. I didn't love it, but it definitely made me want to read more books written by Swedish authors.

Wow. This book was stunningly written. I was caught up in this family’s story. I really loved the backwards storytelling. I will be thinking about this book for awhile.

After returning to their childhood home, three brothers grapple with the dark secrets of their past and the death of their alcoholic mother.

Told by alternating the past and the present, THE SURVIVORS is a slow boil suspense-driven novel with a literary feel. Though suspense fans may grow frustrated with the novel's gradual, relationship-centric start, readers who love stories of dysfunctional families will be hooked from the first chapter. Ultimately, the story is one of adults coming-of-age, reconciling with the consequences of their pasts on their futures. I'd recommend it to adult readers (and book clubs) who enjoy literary fiction about family dysfunction.