| International Standard Book Number |
9780374619916 (paperback)
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| International Standard Book Number |
0374619913 (paperback)
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| Personal Name |
Stridsberg, Sara, 1972- author.
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| Uniform Title |
Beckomberga : ode till min familj. English
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| Title Statement |
Beckomberga : a novel / Sara Stridsberg ; translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner.
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| Edition Statement |
First American edition.
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| Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice |
New York : FSG Originals / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026.
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| Physical Description |
282 pages ; 21 cm.
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| General Note |
"English translation originally published in 2016 be MacLehose Press, Great Britain, as The Gravity of Love: Ode to My Family."
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| General Note |
"Originally published in Swedish in 2014 by Albert Bonniers Forlag, Sweden, as Beckomberga: ode till min familj."
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| Summary, Etc. |
"A haunting novel of a woman's lifelong witness to her father's illness, the long shadow cast on her family, and Stockholm's mythic mental hospital"-- Provided by publisher.
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| Summary, Etc. |
Jackie's father, Jim, lives at Beckomberga. She takes the bus to visit him, though sometimes he refuses to see her and so instead she gets to know his fellow inmates: Olof, a man who has been there since he was a teenager, some sixty-three years; Sabina, wildly unconventional and beloved by Jackie's father and their doctor; and others. Beckomberga is Stockholm's famous, infamous mental hospital. An enormous, once-elegant building, it sits beside the most beautiful park, slowly falling apart. The doctor sometimes takes the residents for a night out -- champagne in the backseat of the car, parties in town; he says: One night beyond the confines of the hospital makes you human again. Over the years, Jackie's family also falls apart, as her mother, Lone, tries to escape the oppressive hold Jim's illness has on her, as Jim himself tries to escape in any way possible. What follows is an extraordinarily beautiful, stirring portrait of a family and the ways in which our flaws, yearnings, and the unreachable parts of ourselves shape those we love. Jackie bears witness to it all across time, with wisdom and aching clarity -- Jim's sadness and absence, Lone's attempts to cope and then flee, the loneliness and wonder of Beckomberga, her own capitulation and erasure in the face of what they need.
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| Language note |
In English, translated from the Swedish.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Fathers and daughters Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Family secrets Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Psychiatric hospitals Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Mental illness Fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Psychological fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Domestic fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Novels.
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| Added Entry, Personal Name |
Bragan-Turner, Deborah, translator.
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