★ 2023-08-12
When renowned Israeli economist Avishay dies at home alone of an apparent heart attack, his four best friends, like him almost 70, conspire to conceal his death for a week to keep him in the running for a Nobel Prize.
Avishay is a strong contender for the honor but needs to be alive when the Nobel committee makes its decision. Yehuda, who has lived in Avishay’s shadow despite becoming rich as a young man from his invention of a kitchen bag opener, proposes the scheme to keep him “alive.” How would they want Avishay remembered, he poses: as “a nice, divorced professor of economics who had a few friends who liked him” or “a man who will be immortalized”? Not to mention a man whose foreword to Yehuda’s yet unpublished book would ensure its success if it bore the Nobel imprint? Everyone has personal gains in mind. Zohara, a single, struggling ghostwriter who has been having an affair with the womanizing Avishay for 20 years, concocts a plan to grab a big share of the Nobel prize money by claiming she was his common-law wife. Keeping the death a secret proves as hairy as it is complicated, especially after an electric bicyclist runs over the dead body during an exasperating attempt to transfer it. As much as the book—the basis for a popular Israeli TV series—thrives on dark slapstick humor, it’s no Weekend at Avishay’s. Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as “one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,” and “sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness.” In the end, the absence of real mourning on anyone’s part can be read as an embrace of life beyond death or a reflection of the shells in which many people live.
A seriously funny take on death and dying.
“Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as ‘one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,’ and ‘sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness’…A seriously funny take on death and dying.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A deviously clever black comedy … Yedlin puts her characters through the wringer with the nonstop confrontations, which are distressing to them and hilarious to the reader. At the same time, she uses the slapstick situation to ask probing questions about the nature of friendship and mortality. Readers will be amused by this literary variation on Weekend at Bernie’s" — Publishers Weekly
“Hilarious, refreshing, tightly plotted and vividly written. An irresistible read.” — Jonas Jonasson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
“The portraits of these four friends are so vivid that as I read, I felt that Avishay’s friends also became mine. Stockholm is unputdownable, full of intrigue, a bit of sadness, and a lot of humor.” — Helene Tursten, internationally bestselling author of An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good
"Set against a backdrop of comedic errors, Stockholm is also a brilliant meditation on the intricacies of friendship, aging, ego, wounds and healing. Yedlin expertly peels back her complex characters’ layers to reveal insights, dark and humorous alike, about what it is to be alive and mortal." — Parini Shroff, author of The Bandit Queens
"A riotous novel... on friendship, character and aging" — The New York Times Book Review
“Stockholm is a madcap adventure filled with laughs and tears and the kind of under-your-skin frustration that only your closest friends can give you." — Bookpage (starred review)
"A hilarious and profound exploration of mortality" — Jewish Book Council
"Diabolically entertaining" — Shelf Awareness
"Too funny, too sad, too real, and too preposterous, just like life. Noa Yedlin's Stockholm is the most entertaining book I've read in a long time." — Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years
"Translated from the Hebrew, Yedlin's charmingly self-aware novel pays tribute to Waking Ned Devine and The Big Chill without lessening the genuine emotions shared amongst this unique group. Ruminating on the power of lifelong friendship—and a little luck—this warm and witty novel is sure to appeal to fans of Zoe Fishman's Inheriting Edith (2016) and Daniel H. Turtel's The Family Morfawitz (2023)" — Booklist
"A delightful dark comedy" — The Spectator
"Bright, witty, irreverent and compassionate, Noa Yedlin's best-selling novel Stockholm is an astute and hilarious study of the very building-blocks of the human condition: love, ambition, aging, friendship, envy and loyalty." — Ruby Namdar, Author of The Ruined House and laureate of the Sapir Prize
“Noa Yedlin has a brilliant sense of Irony. In STOCKHOLM you will find your friends’ covert feelings and your closest family members’ most secret thoughts – and it’s going to be surprising, frightening, funny and liberating”. — Dorit Rabinyan, author of All the Rivers
