Let's Hope For the Best

May 27, 2019
Setterwell’s austere, quietly disturbing debut traces the years from 2009 to 2016 in the life of a narrator who shares the Swedish author’s name. The novel’s journal-like entries are directed to the narrator’s partner, Aksel, who died suddenly in his early 30s of cardiac arrest while Carolina was sleeping on the floor of their infant son’s room in their Stockholm apartment. The story at first follows two timelines, with one set of journal entries beginning just before Aksel’s death and moving into the weeks that follow, and another beginning the day that Carolina and Aksel met and moving forward to eventually catch up with the first timeline. The second half of the novel follows Carolina for two more years as she struggles with grief and meets a potential new partner. The plot is driven not so much by suspense, of which there is little, as it is by an unwavering gaze at the minutiae of the narrator’s often grim life. While her relationship with Aksel had a few moments of joy, it was in trouble before his death, and Carolina documents her sessions with a therapist as she attempts to make peace with her conflicts about staying at home with a demanding infant. While it’s easy to admire Carolina’s scrupulous self-analysis, her consistently melancholy disposition, however well justified, becomes a slog for the reader, and it’s hard not to long for a few moments of humor or lightness. Nevertheless, this is a starkly unsentimental depiction of the difficulties of life after the death of a partner.