What a Time to Be Alive
A nuanced look at the uneven playing fields of friendship and love, and a moving portrait of a narrator who struggles with her eagerness to fit in ... Mustard (she now lives in London) is a measured and gorgeous writer, in command of the senses in a way that makes the reader feel alive alongside the characters
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Excellent ... Stockholm...is vividly alive as a fitting backdrop to her story. This is a beautifully written novel that avoids cliches and comes to a moving conclusion that left this reader wanting more. Some grammatical choices were jarring...should have been picked up by an editor.
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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.
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