RaveRain TaxiAndersson uses her powers of analysis to dissect a more systemic love gone wrong: a middle-aged Swede’s disenchantment with his country as it shifts away from the ideals of Social Democracy ... In depicting Ragnar’s rigid, collective mindset, Andersson succeeds in striking a fine balance between sympathy and satire. While she has clearly organized the novel so that Ragnar and his family can stand in for the \'People’s Home\' mindset, she never loses her investment in them as real people. Ragnar may be a totem, but we still feel his hopes and sorrows ... Son of Svea succeeds through its clarity, precision, sympathy, and charm. Examining Ragnar as he grapples with his beloved country that is slipping away, Andersson’s intellectual acuity drives this quiet narrative with both humor and heartbreak.
Johannes Lichtman
PositiveFiction Writer\'s ReviewWith intelligent probing, sinuous prose, and considerable charm, this Bildungsroman charts his journey, an interior trip to the core of being a compassionate human in the twenty-first century ... Scenes read like meticulous journal entries as Jonas both records his urge to help and questions his own motives and capacity, unsparing when his attempts fall short. This artful realism lends his account an appealingly honest intimacy and immediacy as the quotidian is scrupulously examined ... despite the lack of dramatic conclusions, the stakes feel high as Jonas, unbuffered by oxycodone or ironic quotation marks, opens himself to heartbreak, decides some things, and finds his life.
Ian Morris
MixedFiction Writers ReviewAn unconventional coming-of-age tale ... the author might have done more to further develop this dramatic tension between home and away, as well as to explore the natural comparison between how one conceives of history, its role in our lives, and the way we use it (or don’t) to navigate the present ... Instead, Morris introduces two new elaborate plotlines [that [ in the end both seem overly-complicated and extraneous ... the conclusion is less the joyful triumph of place over experience so much as a slice of realism.
