Let's Hope for the Best

by Carolina Setterwall

Overview

"In Let's Hope for the Best, the protagonist becomes a widow in a moment, a moment that I cannot get out of my head. I feel tremulous admiration for how a work of beauty can exist within a well of violent pain. We should read to explore the width of our humanity. And ultimately, how to expand it."—Lisa Taddeo, bestselling author of Three Women

In her debut novel, Let's Hope for the Best, Carolina Setterwall recounts the intensity of falling in love with her partner Aksel, and the shock of finding him dead in bed one morning. Carolina and Aksel meet at a party, and their passionate first encounter leads to months of courtship during which Carolina struggles to find her place. While Aksel prefers to take things slow, Carolina is eager to advance their relationship -moving in together, getting a cat, and finally having a child.

Perhaps to impose some order on the chaos, Carolina devotedly chronicles the months after Aksel's passing like a ship's log. She unpacks with forensic intensity the small details of life before tragedy, eager to find some explanation for the bad hand she's been dealt. When new romance rushes in, Carolina finds herself assuming the reticent role Aksel once played. She's been given the gift of love again. But can she make it work?

A striking feat of auto-fiction, written in direct address to Setterwall's late partner, LET'S HOPE FOR THE BEST is a stylistic tour-de force.

"A moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief."—Kirkus

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316489621
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Carolina Setterwall was born in 1978 in Sala, Sweden. After studying Media and Communication in Uppsala, Stockholm, and London she has worked within the music and publishing industries as an editor and writer. Setterwall lives in Stockholm with her son.

Editorial Reviews

05/27/2019

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. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Carolina's sentences are spare and simple, and they reveal a portrait of anxiety and control, grief and abandonment, that lasts for many painful years. "How can I hold onto you when you're not here?" she asks. "How can I move on without the approval of the people in our life who matter the most to me? The equation seems unsolvable."A moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief."—Kirkus

"Confessional and shockingly honest about desire, love, and loss...utterly compulsive."—Marian Keyes, bestselling author of The Break and The Woman Who Stole My Life

"It's the most compelling book I've read in years."—Times

"Intense and relentlessly navel-gazing, this debut by 40-year-old Swedish writer Carolina Setterwall may be billed as an autobiographical novel but is quite simply one of the best bereavement memoirs I've read... It's impossible not to draw comparisons with Karl Ove Knausgaard, who must surely have been an inspiration. But there is a unique voice here, a style of disclosure all her own, incidentally beautifully translated. It's an emotional battering ram, I thought, and I absolutely loved it."—Evening Standard

"This Scandinavian bestseller was based on tragic real events, so it's not surprising that every spare, controlled sentence has the ring of truth. (...) This painfully clear-sighted, unsentimental novel is in two alternating parts; one detailing the years leading up to Aksel's death, the other everything that comes after. It's about grief in all its raw messiness, but it's also (as how could it not be?) about time ... Setterwall's refusal to impose twists or false neatness is at first admirable then, as a fragile new love begins to blossom for Carolina, gripping."—Daily Mail

From the Publisher

2019-04-14
In this debut from Stockholm-based writer Setterwall, a real-life relationship becomes the basis of a novel about anxiety, motherhood, and trauma.

Carolina is an adventurous concert promoter who falls fast and hard for quiet Aksel, a freelancer. "I'm thirty, and my love life is a mess," she admits, detailing her failed relationships and attempts to address bad romantic patterns in therapy. An anxious but eager girlfriend, she pushes the two across milestone after milestone while circumspect Aksel agrees to be pushed. "If I just wait a few hours, you come back," she muses. "I'm starting to learn your patterns. I'm starting to figure out how to exist in your world." But things shift when the new couple moves into their suburban Stockholm apartment and Carolina admits to wanting a baby. Despite Aksel's hesitations, Carolina resolves to find a way to both have a child and keep Aksel in her life. "Our negotiations are not beautiful," she recalls. "Neither of us ever leaves the kitchen table feeling good." Then, when their son, Ivan, is only a few months old, Aksel dies suddenly in his sleep. To cope with her grief, Carolina chronicles their relationship, from the day they first met until their son turns 2 and romance finds her yet again. Addressed directly to Aksel, the twin narratives of excitement and grief depict Carolina's obsession with both being and having this particular partner. Like grief itself, the narrative is exhausting and exhaustive, as Carolina accumulates details to learn more about her need to control relationships in the face of real or manufactured chaos. Her sentences are spare and simple, and they reveal a portrait of anxiety and control, grief and abandonment, that lasts for many painful years. "How can I hold onto you when you're not here?" she asks. "How can I move on without the approval of the people in our life who matter the most to me? The equation seems unsolvable."

An occasionally moving and tender work of autofiction that depicts the obsessive interiority of grief.

Kirkus Reviews