RaveTimes Literary Supplement\"In the tradition of Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot and A. S. Byatt’s Possession, Perry explores scholarly obsession, questioning how far it is possible for us to make contact with the past. But through her curator, this contact becomes stranger, more physical, embodied in the scenes she is staging ... In Rebecca Perry’s novel, we witness two kinds of resurrection: that found in the art of fiction and that found in the art of curation, both bringing the dead vividly back to life.\
PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)The reader may not always like [Sickan\'s] narration, either, which is full of long comma-less sentences and slightly broken phrasing ... The book tracks her quest to decode ordinary social patterns. She notes down the dialogue and copies the behaviour of those around her, an exercise that results in astute observations ... Between style and subject, What a Time to Be Alive might be an acquired taste for the general reader, but for fans of coming-of-age novels, it is moving ... Her friendship with Hanna is an especially well-evoked rollercoaster of intimacy and annoyance ... Mustard gives us some fascinating insights into the changing youth culture of Sweden ... A curious novel.
