New Swedish Books, Spring 2020 1
39 Spring 2020 Always goodbye Always Goodbye is a
n autobiographical story about the author as a twelve-year-old. Her parents are divorced and she spends much of the year living with her mother in the northern Swedish town of Umeå. She spends her summers with her father, by the coast in the southern county of Bohuslän. But as soon as Alma boards the flight to travel to her Dad’s, she is gripped by anxiety and homesickness, which are not improved by her grandmother’s grumpy attempts to find fault with her. Summer by the sea comes to be characterised by divided loyalties between her parents at a time when Alma is in the space between childhood and adult life, standing on the cliff edge of childhood. However, a source of comfort is her mother’s old journal, which Alma finds in the attic just before heading south. In it she reads how the same conflicts of divorce and understanding in the adult world influenced the generation before her. The harsh ink drawings of the present are contrasted against sepia-tinted illustrations of the past, with faces and small emotional expressions often seen in extreme close-ups. Nevertheless, there are no good or bad people – only lonely children, misunderstood adults, the great longing for connection and the small bridges of contact that sometimes form between people in spite of everything. Alma Thörn Debut author Alma Thörn was educated at the Umeå Konstskola and the Comic Art School in Malmö and specialises in thread painting. 320 p. Alma Thörn (b. 1992) Publisher Galago www.galago.se Rights Am-book Alessandra Sternfeld alessandra@am-book.com Photo: Johannes Samuelsson